I actually think this is a smart idea if you are sure you don't like the clinic and did very well in your PhD, such that you have the CV to compete at a high level for research positions.
It's very difficult to publish anything notable during residency and once you've done it you then have a publishing gap that puts you at a disadvantage compared to straight PhDs who have spent those years in postdoc positions. This can be overlooked when you are in an area where the clinical training is important because of the the other advantages that training brings (and often most of your peers are also MDs so many people are in the same position), but it won't help you get a basic-science position at a university or research institute where most of your competitors for the job are straight PhDs and the clinical training doesn't have any specific tangible benefit.
That said, the MD won't help you at all if you don't do the residency. (The utility of the MD+residency for research is that it opens up many clinical/translational research areas, giving you more flexibility to move across fields, a better understanding of important problems and areas of need, and access to patients which helps with subject recruitment. Beyond that it provides secure employment as a clinician for backup in case research doesn't work out or to tide you over a lean funding time, which is huge but if you are certain you would be unhappy with this it may not be so important to you.) You will be in the same position as any other PhD in a horrible job market so I would only do this if your PhD was supremely productive.
One caveat is that I think it's hard to know if you like clinical work without trying it. I originally went MD/PhD with a very straight-PhD mindset (my backups were PhD programs, I did not apply MD only) and thinking I was more than likely to skip the residency. It turned out my PhD was much less fun than I anticipated and I found I liked clinical work much more than I had expected to. I'd still go into third year with an open mind if I were you.
