Yeah I’m not buying it.

• in academia, there are a lot more mid- and low-tier academics (like me!) than there are high-tier academics, and there are plenty of lower-tier venues and lower-tier institutes. In these tiers, you’re not expected to publish at the highest levels.
• in higher-tier academia, once you get tenure (to be precise: once you submit your tenure package) the urgent need for high-impact journal cites is greatly reduced. you write books or something I dunno.
• industry scientists have far fewer publishing requirements. or they write articles for trade mags. One place I interviewed was actively hostile to publishing.
• government-lab scientists, I dunno, I think they write technical articles that they give their sponsors?

The dynamic that u/mIRNAexpert describes does exist, but it’s not the whole problem. And like any scientist will tell ya, figuring out the problem is half way to figuring out the solution.