The PhD process has been severely watered down over the past few decades. When I was getting my PhD, in the '90s, I met another PhD student from Berkley (geology), whose dissertation involved going to a single outcrop, collecting samples, doing geochemical analysis of the samples, and writing it up. This was barely an MS thesis level project; more akin to an undergraduate senior project! This was not an exception to what was, and continues to be, pumped out as PhD worthy research! Combine the minimal effort required with the leftist indoctrination they received as undergraduates (graduate level sciences, other than "climate change" related, are mostly void of politics), and it's no wonder "science" is in the state it is today.