But how could we possibly evaluate faculty and researcher quality without counting widgets on an assembly line? /s

It’s a problem. The previous regime prior to publishing-mania was essentially a clubby game of reputation amongst peers based on cocktail party socialization.

The publication metrics came out of the harder sciences, I believe, and then spread to the softest of humanities. It was always easy to game a bit if you wanted to try, but now it’s trivial to defeat.