As someone who lives outside of America, I really wouldn't be so down on it as a country. I'm lucky to live in a very nice part of the world (Switzerland!) but even so, America is a country and culture I hugely admire. I've spent most of my career working for American firms because that's where the action is, that's where the bravest people tackle the hardest problems. Yes, America is a land of extremes and the lows can be low, but the compensation is that the highs are really high.
"For example, in every field, funding is corrupted. So I wouldn't say there are some fields that don't get much invalid research at all. Outright fraud is not the only kind of "invalid" research."
Ah, I see. Well, I'd say that the funding mechanism makes invalid research possible/easy but doesn't necessarily directly create it. The lights are out but someone still has to misbehave. In some fields there just isn't much incentive to do that, e.g. consider computer graphics or the papers that explore more efficient K/V stores or compilers. You could try and cheat in those papers but why bother? You'd just be undermining any possible future jobs in industry, so I find these papers to be pretty reasonable.
The corruption really seems to kick off in fields that can be twisted into forms of social control in some way, or where there's not much chance of ever getting a good job in the private sector. Social sciences are a great example but public health is the same problem. People see an opportunity to change the world through misrepresenting their science, they see that nobody will stop them, and so they take it. Power is the goal and the apathetic funders are the enabler. You can't change the world or control anyone via compiler research though, so it stays closer to the original ideals.
Now, I agree that if you wider the problem scope to include irrelevant research nobody cares about, then indeed every field has big problems with that. It's probably too much to ask people to care about both invalid and irrelevant research at once though.
"I bet Gates would be happy to admit a lot of the research he funds is "low quality." That isn't a personal indictment against him. He'd probably argue that a lot is "medium quality" and a lot is "high quality." I wouldn't disagree. I'm sure there is some proportion in all three buckets."
Well if you or anyone else can get him to admit that, it'd be a great start.