This is seen even in very technical fields, such as physics. As the saying goes in poker, if you are in academia and can't spot this person, then it's probably you. It's also a slightly cynical take on imposter's syndrome, in a way.
Edit: sibling is making much the same point. The concept is only useful if actual imposters can be identified.
Likewise if you believe - probably correctly - that your failures don't matter because you can bullshit and bluster your way through them. And if that doesn't work, a quick word with your sponsors will sort out your problems.
Impostor syndrome is the opposite - caring about quality, feeling you fall short (because quality is hard), and relying on substance not superficiality to get ahead.
I'm still quite skeptical, but even this simple conversation is far deeper than any discussion I've seen on the subject. I would never have bothered to think about the caring dimension if you hadn't mentioned it.
You have a table full of top-tier poker players and you have a rookie who won a contest to be in a game alongside them. The rookie is playing absolutely terrible, the commentators are cringing at the moves the rookie is making. The other players are clearly doing things to take advantage of the rookies playing style. Yet at the same time, the rookie comes out in 3rd place, up 50k from their buy in at the start of the night. 3 seasoned award winning professionals are all net-negative for the night, some of which are -150k from where they started after 150 hands played.
Is this rookie an impostor or not? Does it matter that the rookie is an impostor if he is still beating people who verifiably are not impostors over the average of 150 separate hands?
I guess all this is to say that I don't get what value using the impostor's syndrome framing gives us.