I would not hire an analyst who was wrong. If I could choose between someone who was right and someone who was off - by a factor of a 1000 in this retard's case, I would always choose the better candidate. This isn't a controversial opinion.
The way academia functions today is that researchers are funded to publish papers, regardless of their quality. Just pick any study in the field of nutrition or exercise and you'll see how laughable they are. Even the hard sciences are having problems, but that's another topic.
Directionally, we are bitcoiners, which makes this particular Harvard economist's opinion irrelevant :).