My impression wasn't based on personal experience. So, I'll defer to your experience....
I remember a professor talking about them for the CalTrans bridges (a different animal since the bridge deck is usually a post tensioned multi-cell box girder). How the CalTrans guys just "like the look" of the capitals and they didn't really have a good structural engineering reason for them. Then years later an architect telling me how much he hated the look of an expose straight column and would always want to "dress them up" in some way. But, no one ever actually requested column capitals on any of the jobs I worked on.
I had a guy want to put a bunch of "architectural" columns in at crazy slopes and angles to make it "look better". I believe they were eventually removed from the project to save money. This was an OSHPD project too. Try explaining to the structural guys at OSHPD why these goofy architectural elements can be neglected from the lateral force resisting system.
I had a parking garage project, in Winnipeg, decades back where the architect was concerned about the 'mottled' colour of the various concrete mixes that had been placed... the contractor painted it a 'concrete green'... looked very strange.
Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?
