The culture in academia is afraid of failure, that's why grant money is allocated very conservatively. It sounds like that didn't use to be the case. I suspect

The culture in academia is afraid of failure, that's why grant money is allocated very conservatively. It sounds like that didn't use to be the case. I suspect that at some point funding was cut or was threatened to be cut by Congress and the powers that be decided that never again would they be in that situation and thus decided to play it safe. That trauma is seen in the pressures to publish only positive results, which leads to embellishment or fabrications and thus a reproducibility crisis. Playing it safe means that few risks are taken, and only grant proposals that abide by the current models and ways of thinking are funded. I assume that some discoveries may have been swept away as outliers or manipulated to fit into current models to ensure a smooth path towards publication. I don't think the current system will fix itself, there's too many barriers, too many bureaucratic stops, too much politics.