Yes, I can churn out a lot more stuff as can most of my peers. Experiments etc are all way faster to run with coding agents. But I think the overall creativity and originality is a lot lower. I think this is what many people are facing, if you don't use LLMs your short term productivity is worse.

They're incredibly more productive. LLMs are amplifiers, so where they'd have branched and tried out N things, they can easily try 5N pathways of RnD. LLMs are extending the frontiers of science fast -- math -> phy -> chem -> bio in that order.

It depends on the field, but an Economist with a PhD is a huge red flag and anything they say should be ignored.

Other fields may be different. YMMV