But there's also an annoyingly performative aspect to it, at least in Economics. Using a recognisable LaTeX font carries an implicit "look at me: I'm smart and technical enough to use LaTeX".
One result of this is that almost every Economics presentation you see is done with Beamer; which lends itself to dense text, bullet points and equations; which are almost never the best way to present your work.
I don't think that has anything to do with Beamer. That's how economists present for some horrible reason. When I was on the job market about 20 years ago, the overhead projector was the only tool universally available for presentations, and I had a couple people comment that my work would be discounted by some because it was too easy to understand. That was back when I mistakenly thought the point of the presentation was to explain my research.
I think that’s what drove the defaults of PowerPoint, with its white text on a dark blue background (see https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=... for arguments as to why that’s good for slide projections. I think it also minimizes contrast differences between typical “medical conference” photo and text slides. That’s important in a darkened room , which they had to use because projectors weren’t bright enough yet.
Making things easier on the other hand is liberating, but sadly comes at a cost (people might start thinking you only do trivial work)
Haha, either they discount it because they understood it, or they respect it but don't know it. In either case, it's like they never saw the presentation.