>I am moderately pessimistic about the state of research because I do hear things I don't like, but this is compensated by my belief that US academia has a ridi

>I am moderately pessimistic about the state of research because I do hear things I don't like, but this is compensated by my belief that US academia has a ridiculous amount of institutional entropy, and I'm perfectly willing with temporary issues if this means at least some of the long term problems will be improved I am confused how 'burn it all down' will solve any problems, let alone long term ones. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how innovation works. The 'deal' of basic science in the US is that the government funds broadly and without prejudice. Topics are decided by experts and overseen by experts. These experts are taking large pay-cuts (compared to their worth in industry) to have the freedom to investigate their own interests. In return the public gets a vast amount of R&D on the cheap, much of which doesn't seem to have immediate ROI, but as we well know, has tremendous long term ROI. Yes sometimes those ideas are dead-ends or don't replicate. Yes sometimes fraud/plagiarism happens. Yes sometimes people research minorities or marginalized people. Certain interests have made some people believe that these are symptoms of a broken system when in reality they are all just parts of the scientific process and freedom of thought. These interests mostly have used culture war issues as a wedge to defund science broadly. So no, we should not destroy tomorrows cancer treatment (which could save you or the ones you love) because some tech-oligarch wants more money/power.