I'm sure there's enough dermatologists and pharmaceutical engineers to give their informed opinion on such a topic, instead of having economists speaking as everythingologists on every damn subject…
(I know why they do that, the author is merely a polical activist, but I wish editors would just close the door to such pieces).
Is there a term for regulatory capture but for academia? Like "academic capture"?
See also Nobel Disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
I think the problem overall is just that we live in a society that conditions us to get validation from the size of our paychecks. Software engineers get a fat paycheck and think "well I must be really smart. Why else would society compensate me like this?". I'm sure it's a problem in all sorts of highly-paid fields. I'm always shocked by how many physicians I see write massively ambitious, terribly researched generalizations (see Jared Diamond and the experts in relevant fields that will spend the rest of their lives dispelling myths he spread)