Why is "X is broken." People say this about interviewing and other stuff too. Yes it is broken, but that is the game. You either play it or if you chose not to you won't get the fancy Professorships and title, or in the professional world you won't get the job you want, the promotion you want etc.
The difference between that and job interviews is that we are forced to pay for this crap via taxes. It is literally a black hole for tax-dollars.
I still say cut government funding for research by 90% and watch it get fixed automatically as all the bad actors stop joining (you still probably need to wait for the current ones to die/retire).
