This is such a weird perspective because the attitude I associate with people who go through the university system on the academic path is not obedience at all, but ruthless self advancement. Like literally where are all these obedient people you are talking about?
I would characterize the problem with science as being a failure to increase the available resources commensurate with the population of people capable of doing science. In this situation, the competition becomes sufficiently fierce that it is statistically better to lie, cheat or knee-cap your competitors in some other way than it is to actually do good science, which is unreliable. What you see as fealty to scientific authority is actually just a system which has become totally dominated by resource competition to the exclusion of its actual purpose.
I would characterize the problem with science as being a failure to increase the available resources commensurate with the population of people capable of doing science. In this situation, the competition becomes sufficiently fierce that it is statistically better to lie, cheat or knee-cap your competitors in some other way than it is to actually do good science, which is unreliable. What you see as fealty to scientific authority is actually just a system which has become totally dominated by resource competition to the exclusion of its actual purpose.