You could also argue the opposite:

The aim of many scientists is discovery, publishing is a side chore to survive and to get funding. Automate paperwork and you get more time for discovering.

Seems to me that both perspectives are true, and the relative importance of the metric incentive vs the discovery incentive varies. But the metrics and rewards are critical to the perpetuation of the scientific discovery system; its really hard to disentangle.

Well the paperwork is automatable, and things are being automated. But still there're the findings that the article points to: it's leading to far more publishing (and ladder-climbing) than novel discoveries.