@skdh says foundational physics is broken due to obsolete "beauty" criteria.
Plus general academic problems:
• Short funding cycle means you can't try anything new & difficult.
• Everyone piles into the hot area, to get cited. Redundant efforts.
http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-211-sabine-hossenfelder-on-the-case-against-beauty-in-phy.html …
But, as Kuhn pointed out, when a science reaches the crisis point, business-as-usual runs out, and you have to start experimenting with relaxing implicit social constraints, to find a new direction. Dropping the beauty constraint seems plausible to me (as a total non-physicist).