https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-m...
also the scandals in standford and harvard.
also this https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202307201... which is bad because the academia is intended to be above this "petty geopolitics". as far as I know academic collaboration didn't quite stop either during the cold war, but I was born after it was over so I don't really know this, might be wrong.
and more than all these, the whole sci-hub debacle is the biggest telltale.
this is not about good or bad science, but about the money incentives.
maybe I'm in a news-bubble, but I also see things about postdocs being a fraud, even PhD's are now a dubious gamble?
and then I add my personal experience doing a masters at a public 3rd world country university, and I just hope it burns to the ground, which is a bad idea to dwell on.