Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argued with my teachers over subject matter in high school, it is infuriating. When this is what you were asking for all along, how can you be so surprised that it’s what you got?

It does raise a question of how the grass is green, and why it’s on the other side.

Fun fact: The grass on the hillsides in the opening sequence of The Sound Of Music was actually painted by hand. It was worth it for the altitude and the Austrian mountain backdrop.

By "citation dependence" I assume you mean that researchers are judged by how many citations their own work has received. This is an time-efficient, yet imperfect mechanism to measure the importance of a research work.

Are there more accurate ways to measure the importance/impact/relevance of research work?