Depends, mainly because 'academia' is far too broad of a term. For starters not all professors teach the same amount of hours (don't know all rules across all universities but there might very well be professors who do not teach at all but instead have PhD students do it, or post-docs). Professors which have anough funding can hire people for administrative work; though they'd still have to take care of getting funding usually whih is also a huge time sink. In some fields professors actually do practical work themselves, or are very close to it. Not all fields can realy on the same amount of literature-only studies. In some fields with novel research there might not even be literature to use. And so on.

In the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov this exact meme is lampooned.

A character describes how they went to the library, read all the old books, wrote a paper and called it new research.

Dr Asimov may have seen the bleak future of academia, what with it being his other trade.

Mayhap we need more Dr Indiana Jones types with tenure?

Read it in context

They’re talking about a guy who wrote an encyclopedia, obviously he’s going to rely on sources and not personally go and visit every plant

An encyclopedia is a summary

Usually the professors have a bunch of PhD students working on topics the prof specializes in. So yes and no.

As someone in academia… no. But I can’t speak for everyone and I am sure it varies by field.

I was struck by the same comment. Forgot to add that they get tenure by volume of papers, which exacerbates this farce.

Yes.