There’s an Issac Asimov short story, “The Dead Past” which eerily predicted this state of affairs from the trend of bureaucratic controlled science in the 1950s. Google the term “intellectual anarchy” to find the story.
Few people understand that federal funding has virtually destroyed science as an evidence-based process, at least in heavily-funded areas. And so-called peer review, which Republicans often equate with “good science”, is one of the primary means used to impose the political control.