It sounds like you want a return to a time before a lot of the government research money coming to institutions like MIT was gutted.

No, today institutions like Georgia Tech -- which has an endowment of just about the same as MIT in the nineties adjusted for inflation -- seem to function just about the same way as MIT did back then.

I want to get back to the era before people went to MIT as a center of wealth, power, and prestige, and would lie and cheat to get tenured positions there, to where it was a place where nerds went to nerd together.

And to a place where every !@#$% done didn't lead to a self-hyping press release, but where statements were precise, measured, calibrated, and most importantly, scientifically-accurate.