Will take time to respond in full later, but mostly agreed and to add: people in academia care for publishing papers, and thus for converting their research into a “story” to get it published. I have hear the word “story” way more times that anything “truth/knowledge” related in academia, especially in practical labs that were producing light-emitting diodes.

In fact, my current purely money-making field is way closer to the truth and way more empirical than most of the academy: our ultimate judge is profit, and if the profit goes bad, neither beauty of the model or system nor story will acquit you.

And let’s not forget that in academia the truth is defined democratically, otherwise we won’t be having dark matter [not even a] theory as the leading “explanation” of observed breakdown of relativity at galactic+ scales/small accelerations.