Take the NSF for example. (Pardon a US-centric example.) If you have a record showing that a particular PI has published 10 provably false/fraudulent papers, is the NSF really going to keep funding that person? At some point, the desire to avoid embarrassment and save their own skin may drive the NSF to de-risk by not funding the flagrant frauds.
Imagine if this were a world-class research institute, supported morally and with funding by people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Imagine if those people recognize that we can advance science and global progress much farther and faster if we tackle the epidemic of garbage research in academia (which I'd say is over 60%). Imagine running TV ads that say: "No, we are not right-wing nutjobs. There really IS a plague of garbage research."
(In fact, right-wing sponsors should be totally ruled out. As well as clearly left-wing sponsors. We want basically nonpolitical people who are basically trusted, like, again, Bill and/or Melinda Gates, Elon Musk, and so on. So, no Peter Thiel, which is unfortunate, because it would be right up his alley.)
But then you're publishing papers that try to replicate studies and specifically calling out specific frauds and getting their funding taken away, and more broadly arguing for funding agencies and academic departments to stop tolerating the culture of fraud and shoddy work. And you're calling out the worst offenders (in terms of academic departments and funding agencies) and calling on their political sponsors (like Congressmen) to cut their funding if they don't clean it up.
There may be areas of science where the foundation doesn't go, like climate change (maybe race?), because they are too heated. That's OK. It doesn't have to cover everything.
Part of the reason academia is really broken is, people aren't rewarded for proving that results can't be replicated. We need to find a way to incentivize that. The scientific process does not work without it. Also, academia doesn't allow people to just say, "This idea is wrong."
Academia is composed of a million little old-boys-club silos. You don't get into any of these clubs if you are not going to play ball. De facto, you cannot criticize your peers, if you are in academia.
For instance, the NSF has grant-award panels that are composed of researchers in the niche. So if you criticize your peers you literally cannot get NSF funding. Because your funding is literally gated by your "peers" as in "peer review." But if you were gonna be that way, you wouldn't have gotten a tenure-track job in the first place, because tenured professors only want people in the club to become their "peers" and sit on those committees.
I'm concerned I may be kind of overstating my case, but it's hard for me to know exactly how widespread the worst-case version of the problem is. Certainly what I'm describing can and does happen.