“Puzzle-playing” reminds me of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions :
https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/
So, that’s just academia for you, except it might be worse in the Philosophy department, for all the reasons that you outline ?
As long as it’s not with a bulldozer...
https://medium.com/s/story/peterson-historian-aide-m%C3%A9moire-9aa3b6b3de04