This suggestion is so detached from both the problem and the very nature of academia that it's straight-out laughable.
I mean, what do product launches have to do building knowledge on the state of the art, identifying a novel idea, doing the iterative work to refine the idea, and finally document it to the public? Product launches at best require you to manage people and expectations. Do you honestly believe that a guy who launched a product is more qualified to drive science forward than a PhD with an outstanding academic track record just because your PM had a knack to cut corners, descope requirements, and pass the buck to underlings? Because that's the bulk of the job of all PMs I ever met, including from FANGs.
Your suggestion is the poster child of the old mantra "if the only tool you have is a hammer you tend to see every problem as a nail".
Academia is a cesspit of politics and dishonesty. Forming the most effective cartels, sensationalizing your results, and being well networked with other academics is not aligned with getting results on actual problems.
The private sector does research with researchers, not product managers.
The process is exactly the same. It's not a public vs private thing. It's a research vs production thing. Research is open-ended and iterative and exploratory. Product design is close-ended, focused, and with hard requirements. Research has zero to do with product management, and you don't change the nature of the problem by pretending that a scientific discovery is a product expecting to be launched.
> Academia is a cesspit of politics and dishonesty.
Oh awesome. Have you ever did any corporate work? Because if you believe that academia suffers from this problem but corporations don't then I have a few bridges I'd like to sell you.
At least in academia you do need to have your publications to back you up. In corporate environments all you have is the cesspool part.
And in my experience teams with these academic data "scientists" are far worse cesspools than normal engineering teams who deliver actual products and value.
Also, what are publications supposed to show? They are often a negative indicator of actual capability. Ever interviewed a data scientist who looks good on paper with tons of publications who can't even write a for loop? I have.
I could write a book about this stuff. The stories I could tell about what's behind those "outstanding academic track records"...
The problem, if anything, is trying to apply a business model to academics, equating research quality with federal grant dollars, taking away real intellectual freedom protections, and then ignoring all the ponzi scheming and exploitation that occurs. Everyone has their heads in the sand, knows academics (at least biomedical research) is full of BS, and just goes on pretending like it's not because no one knows of a good alternative, or doesn't have the courage or power to change things.
What's funny [sad?] to me is that your description of PMs sounds exactly like the most credentialed, accomplished researchers I know on paper.
It's interesting to me regarding some of the examples in the linked piece. Ghostwriting reviews, for example, is actually seen as a good practice in a lot of circles because it provides experience to grad students with the review process. Those guest authorships? Very grey area between that and collaborative authorships. It's not the grunt work, it's the idea, right? Or is it that ideas are a dime a dozen, and actually doing the work is important? I can't tell which it is anymore -- it seems to depend on what benefits those in power.
Someone else posted something about how 1% of research is fraud, and 80% is bad. I think the percent of fraud is probably higher, the percent bad research is lower, and the difference is much more fuzzy than you'd think initially. The really difficult thing is that tiny incremental contributions is how things actually work. No one wants to admit this though. Bad research is actively incentivized, and there's credit bubbles everywhere.
The worst problem is that this credentialing bubble is everywhere with everything, as another posted noted. The problem isn't the credentialing per se, it's how it's detached from reality, the real demands of the tasks. Having a credential doesn't mean that the person is competent for all the tasks it nominally encompasses; conversely, those tasks don't necessarily require the credential that's often demanded.
This definitely has zero to do with quality research being published, and even in startup land, those things are nice to have but still don't prove anything, unless they were the directing agents of those initiatives.