I think the dumbing down of academia has been a process all the way back from the 50/60's and the
'postmodernist movement' gaining traction.
Fear comes in many forms, some obvious, some far more subtle and insidious - but all of them reduce intelligence in some way or other.( AQ+F = IQ -10) ?...lol
I like the algebra of psychology!
the threat to unleash the nihilists and anarchists came true, just in the clothes of relativism, the philosophy of confusion, and the commie revolutionaries. Equality, obedience, stupidity.
The capture of science has been a similar process of slowly infiltrating the funding agencies, hence eliminating experiments that would prove a different picture of reality. eg try doing REAL experiments on pulsed microwave signals on life! There are, but buried within theoretical physics papers. There are also papers from the 1950s/60s when the tech was invented.
Killing people is much easier than finding out how they were killed.