The advice is generally not to advertise yourself as having been a PhD candidate: you're basically advertising that you couldn't complete a PhD. (Insert obligatory caveats about academia having problems, and failure to complete a PhD not implying that somebody is incapable.)
I think if you got three years into a PhD and were faced with the prospect of starting it all over again in another lab, it wouldn't take much to convince you to throw in the towel and do something else instead.
Are they alleging they are currently synthesizing gold? Seems like they are saying, if you do X, Y, and Z with a fusion reactor at some time in the future, you will also get gold as a byproduct.
Honestly in my case I discovered I like being paid actual money and despise academic politics. Got a job offer so I phoned in sick on a catch up with my adviser and never went back. No one even checked on me for 6 weeks (!)