alt Hacker NewsIMO, I don't think this will raise the bar for PhDs.
In every field of science, PhD student research is largely incremental. Very rarely is a thesis groundbreaking. The point of it is all is to function as an apprenticeship for that PhD student to become a scientist.
Sometimes a particularly gifted or lucky one hits an important result, but that's rare and isn't the purpose.
I agree, but there's degrees (no pun intended!). Many PhDs are just an advisor telling a student exactly what to do. The training is still valuable, but it's not really what a PhD is "supposed" to mean. The example I give because of familiarity is many PhDs in chemistry/physics are just clicking run on simulations + running predefined analysis with results already predicted by the PI. Or in chemistry specifically OChem wet lab, it's often basically a minimum wage factory job.