While privatization and the fundraising rat race for grants certainly started us down this trend, academia has been it's own worse enemy recently, and it's prim

While privatization and the fundraising rat race for grants certainly started us down this trend, academia has been it's own worse enemy recently, and it's primary output these days seems to be ideology and activism, rather than cold, hard, factual, evidenced based research and science, so much so, that the activism and ideology has worked its way into the science itself. It's a poisoned well at this point, and it's sad, having worked in a research lab at university myself in the computer vision department, there is still tons of cool things going on, but they all get massively overshadowed by the hot button issues and whatever the Social Justice cause du jour is.