[nathan_compton]

Speaking as a person with a PhD, I can say from personal experience that you don't need popular or far reaching conclusions to earn one. Most of the time the committee wants to see you've done the work and have, in some small way (sometimes surprisingly small) pushed the boundaries of knowledge out a bit.

The kind of Academic Inflation you're talking about is almost entirely the product of PIs who need to publish, publish, publish to get tenure and funding. The vast majority of people who are awarded PhDs understand they have almost no chance of even landing a tenure track position and consequently have little incentive to fluff up their work.