Could it be the phenomenon we also see in areas such as Engineering were as people get more senior most transit into more managerial positions, where the mindset is a lot more about managing appearances and stakeholders, and saying the right things at the right time to the right people rather than the far more "it is as it is" mindset of those on the technical side?

I actually started by going into Science at Uni but ended up switching to Engineering half way on my Degree (not many jobs for Experimentalist Physicists in my homeland) so never actually saw the actual Science career track from the inside through the eyes of somebody with enough professional experience to see the more subtle things about it, so I am genuinely curious if the Science career too has the phenomenon I see in Engineering of Senior people tending to be more Administrator/Manager and less Technical hence with more tendency to manage the subjective perception of reality of others to achieve personal and career goals and less of a desire for things to be as clear and as objective as possible.

Because if it is so, it would explain how many such well established older Scientists seem to be less Scientist in the sense of this meme - because they are less Scientist and have become more Administrator, and the latter has a whole different mindset.

I feel like there's a term for that sort of thinking...