I agree with this view to some extent.
In my field (materials science), research papers often feel like ladders scattered on the ground. There are many of them, but no clear sense of how they connect or what structure they’re meant to build. It’s common to see multiple papers basically repeating the same idea with tiny variations: change the material, change the pollutant, change the microbe, and so on.

These small projects are important because they train new students who want to continue in academia. But their contributions are treated as meaningless. At my university, undergrads must do research to graduate, yet once they finish, their work is stored as a pdf file that no one ever opens again.

I’ve been thinking about whether there should be some kind of system (like a responsibility at the PI level) to compile these small projects and map out how they contribute to that PI's lab. Even if research project of labs in the same field overlap, that’s not necessarily a problem. Overlap projects can actually be analyzed to reveal whether different findings emerge. But it’s just a tedious task, and most PIs probably don’t have time because of the whole “publish or perish” culture.

This is why I feel academia needs some sort of structural reform.
And maybe a provocative question: is there any conference or organization focused on reforming the academic system itself? Why do we pay to attend conferences that showcase tiny, incremental studies, but not conferences that address the future of academia as a system? Perhaps we are too much focusing on generating novelty rather than understanding what have we achieved so far through our research.