Unsurprisingly, in the vast majority of cases, substance and reputation tend to be at least loosely correlated, at least in academia. There are high-profile exceptions, but they are only high-profile because they are indeed exceptional.
Perhaps, but it not only deviates from the practice of science but creates the very conditions that science has been developed to overcome- i.e., social status is accepted as the driver of research rather than the pursuit of knowledge. It might be considered ok for financial institutions to make decisions on who to fund or partner with based on status signals, but it is galling to think that is how our scientific institutions work. That practice seems as scientific as scientology.
