That's a prejudice that you're supporting with anecdata. Saying "PhDs make bad programmers" is not any different in that regard from saying "women make bad programmers". But at least you're agreeing with me that resumes are not worthless ;-) ...as, apparently, you find them useful for screening out people with PhDs who therefore make bad programmers.

The fact is that there is such a thing as an "impressive resume". There seem to be people out there eager to dismiss the value of those. Frequently an explanation will be that they themselves don't have one and are engaging in cognitive dissonance reduction. In fact, one can say more generally that psychological forces will act powerfully in such a way as to make hiring managers want to hire people who are just like them, even when they themselves are worse than the best candidates they could hire.

That's the reason why having an analytically well-reflected hiring process, instead of just hiring who you like, is important, and resumes have an important role to play in that.