The problems are social. Financialisation means a lot of smart PhDs get hoovered up by Wall St to do (effectively useless) work as quants. At the same time, pressure in academia - also created ultimately by financialisation - has made genuinely original creative work an extremely risky career move.

So PhD advisors are far more likely to say "Don't do that" when a hot prospect says "I want to explore this unusual thing which i found from way back which no one else is looking at."

And the idea that a patent clerk without a formal academic affiliation could publish papers that transform physics has become ridiculous.

Conversely mainstream ideas of questionable value - like string theory - which should only ever have remained a fringe interest have become absolutely central, because they're a relatively easy way for ambitious PhDs aiming for tenure to produce plausible physics-like content.

Science was working pretty well around the turn of the century. Now there's sand in the gears, and the entire machine is in danger of seizing up.