My claim is based primarily on inductive reasoning and personal experience. I know quite a few good scientists, none of whom have any semblance of a work life balance. And when I was a scientist, the job was as all consuming as doing a startup.
The big difference in a startup is that if you ideas really do work, after some number of years you will presumably be both quite wealthy and also have the time for a more reasonable work life balance.
Further, you seem to imply that it is all about science. It is not. There have been more than one scientist whose said that the amount of time they get to dedicate to actual research is the time they get when they get home at night.
The rest of the time is spent teaching, writing grants, and politicking. These are not things that all scientists want to do, and it's easy to understand why some become unmotivated.
Finally, in my opinion, one of the biggest negatives about being a scientist today is public opinion. The public feels you deserve to work on a minimum wage salary and that it's appropriate and correct for you to devote all your spare time to your job. Further, you best work on something the public deems useful to them, otherwise you are wasting time in your ivory tower.
It's hypocritical, because this level of judgement is not put on other jobs of similar skill level. I didn't even touch on the problems with the "publish X number of paper or perish" attitude that is all to common today.
Stepping back from the original article, what I would say is that a lot of the problems in academia are perhaps caused by inappropriate rewards systems based on the idea that academic research productivity can be measured over reasonably short timescales.
I'd actually be more in favor of much less overt short term performance evaluation for academics and accepting that some will, undoubtedly, squander this privilege while others would, I believe, more than reward society for this trust. Of course, this would probably be unacceptable politically as the emphasis there is often to minimize the negatives rather than to maximize the positives.
The solution is simple - eliminate tenure. Then you can take a risk on a promising scientist - worst case, you fire him/her in a few years.
You may not even be able to get them at all, because there's a widespread perception that non-tenure-granting universities don't offer much academic freedom (especially in biochem, where they have strong ties with pharmaceutical companies). I could be wrong, but I don't believe these institutions have so far been successful in attracting top talent.
One hypothesis is that corporate research labs already occupy this ground well enough, so non-tenure-granting universities don't have much competitive advantage when looking for talent. If you don't care about tenure, want a higher salary, and are willing to accept the fact that management can review and direct your work, why work at a university at all? Why not Google Research or the R&D division of a pharmaceutical firm?
"...I came home in 1989...to a tenure-track job, running my own research lab at a University of London institute, where I remained until the sad demise of my career...I got tenure..."
All the same, I'm not sure how she was on the tenure track given that no UK academic appointed (or promoted!) after 20 November 1987 has tenure. Perhaps there is a more complex story with her date of appointment, or perhaps, given that Science is a US publication, she is simplifying a tenure track equivalent UK position for a US audience.
Reference for the legislation: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/40/part/IV/crosshea...
But this is a side issue (my fault, I started it!), I'd agree with your basic point that tenure is a problem. Just, it's not the only problem and it wasn't the problem in this case.