Good essay. Yes, the sociology and politics of the way we do science is overtaking the reproducible learning aspect. Foundations for many things, like physics, are as solid as necessary for doing a lot of work, but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you're so indoctrinated into a culture that you don't have the mental tools necessary to do the required work. So instead you just chug along the way the last generation did, adding a decimal point here or there.
It's not wrong. It's just not changing over time. It is stagnant.
The nice thing about physics is that with new advances in astronomy and the lack of a unified theory, it keeps getting poked with reminders that there may be missing pieces. That's not true in many other fields.