That's why I got out during the first year of my PhD.

I had doubts that my field was actually ever going to solve the problem it was supposed to, and brought up the issue with one of my supervisors.

He took my analysis one step further and explained how the (very very slow) progress we appeared to be making was basically just sampling bias, but it didn't matter because the point of being in the a 3 year PhD program wasn't too discover anything but to go through the motions.

Nope!