It doesn't surprise me that many of the prolific authors are in medical and life sciences. I have worked with validating registered research at a large hospital (actually a conglomerate of multiple hospitals) and the physicians there had the most 'creative' ways of registering their research I have ever seen. Interviewed by a journalist? Let's put that down as a peer reviewed journal article. It was absolutely jaw dropping some of the things they tried to get way with in order to inflate their publication numbers. I'm sure that many other tricks are being used, like pressuring students to publish papers and get your name on them without any work, etc. Citation cartels have been uncovered among journals that you wouldn't normally think to be predatory, and are indexed by Scopus and/or WoS. It would not surprise me the least if publication cartels exists as well, with editors and reviewers agreeing to let anything get published in exchange for returning the favor.
Another way is to simply use existing methods applied to a new gene/molecule. So in principle you're just doing the work of a laboratory technician, but you get to publish a scientific article.
That still sounds like potentially useful work to me, I always appreciate it when I'm looking something up and can find those gigantic tables of everything applied to everything. Perhaps not a Nature paper but at least it's something.
