[dnautics]

>assumes that there is internal accountability within that field

Yeah, that is a huge, and completely wrong assumption about the sciences.

I could rattle off a list of names just in my field (you should google them to find out exactly what they did): Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen. Leo Paquette. Homme Hellinga. Peter Schultz/Jonathan Zhang. Geoffrey Chang. Armando Cordova. To varying degrees of fraud, or negligence (e.g. Chang wasn't fraudulent, just almost criminally[0] negligent) And those are the people who got caught, and the ones I know about. Guess how many of them still have faculty positions?

[0]I feel safe saying this (with the "almost" qualification) because misappropriation of federal funds is a crime.

Irrespective of your assumption, you still need some sort of justfication for giving taxpayer money to science. Presumably, because it's good for society. Well fine. If it's so good for society, why can't you find people to give money to science as a free-will donation?