> I've also witnessed first-hand how people that manage to publish well adopt monopolistic strategies, sabotaging interesting grant proposals from other groups or stalling their article submissions while they copy them. This is a problem that seldomly gets discussed.

Agree. Everyone has heard about the extreme fraud cases, but the casual toxicity that the pressure cooker environment elicits is rarely discussed and probably a far larger problem. I say that as someone who has spent too much time in this environment and never witnessed outright fraud - that I know of.