calling this "Makefile" effect is a terrible disservice. one could as easily call it "PHP" effect, "YAML" effect, etc. pick whichever language you'd personally like to denigrate.
there is nothing that makes makefiles inherently more or less susceptible to this. if it's more common, it's because people don't want to take the time doing more solid engineering and clean design for something like a ci/cd config or a makefile, being viewed as ancillary or less important. and so they often don't want to learn the language, so monkey-see-monkey-do.
as sibling comments state, this is better called cargo cult or maybe copy-pasta. and i've seen it with any language c, c++, python, scripts, config files, anything. i even see it in chat gpt answers because it's regurgitating someone else copy pasta.
if it's a problem, it's a problem of discipline.
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