As a former academic, the point is to get the research published. Whether the code continues to work after that, is irrelevant.
I've also seen my friends on the mill of, shall we call it paper chasing? That seems most apt. It reminded me of borrowing someone's homework and making minor changes to get it past teacher - except the homework was the same paper being constantly rejigged for submission to a new journal. Not much truly new work seemed to be going on.