Does it still work though? In the days of Einstein, I imagine you could slack off easier in such a position than nowadays.
The problem these days is that we're inundated with busywork not only in academia, but in most occupations.
Even in general at very large scale, a world of limited and shrinking economic opportunity but unlimited and expanding education (well, until the future student loan crash arrives), means you can try to pile on busywork but the people shamming and pencil whipping it are better at shamming and pencil whipping and everything else, than any other cohort in the history of humanity...
As a cultural touchstone look at the movie "Office Space" still relevant today. He stares at the walls for an hour or two every day trying to look busy. Sure you might have to pass three interviews with ten people while proving P=NP and writing a javascript compiler to GET the job, but to DO the job you have to update TPS report headers every couple weeks and that's about it, other than loading letter size paper into the laser printer and staring at walls looking busy. Not to spoil the plot of the movie but the lead actor is not a theoretical physicist although if he were, it would be a dream job for him, work about an hour a week then look really busy the other 39+ hours while working on physics.
> cardboard boxes for a living? Flipping burgers?
Or working as a patent clerk, maybe?
Yes, pretty much anything outside the academic process was what I meant, so that your livelihood does not depend on the outcome of your research, because then you have to tailor your research directions towards the safe and accepted. And so your straw men actually would work, though suboptimally because the income is probably too low to allow you free time.
Also, misquoting me by leaving out the "really" makes your argument disingenuous, because the "really" made clear that the statement is not a 100% but a trend (if a somewhat overwhelming one), and 4 exceptions (names?) don't exactly disprove a generalization.
It would also be interesting if you see your four examples as holdouts from a different era, or general exceptions. I'd wager they're more of the former rather than the latter, and that their number is dwindling.