Not sure which specific field you have in mind there but many parts of academia also have off the charts levels of, as GP put it, "the most autistic people". Outside of the university bureaucracy (which is its own separate thing) nearly all of the "wtf" that I encountered there had good reasons behind it. Often simply "we don't have the cash" but also frequently things that seemed weird or wrong at first glance but were actually better given the goals in that specific case.

Interfacing with IT, who thought they knew the "right" way to do everything but in reality had little to no understanding of our constraints, was always interesting.