It's definitely not just politics. Popper was not just a champion of reproducibility but also a champion of falsifiability. This is something many a scientist also loses sight of. People will formulate their hypothesis and then try to prove it, rather than trying to disprove it, which is often the much more effective strategy for avoiding bias and other issues. You see this most often with the "soft" sciences, but it crops up in the harder ones as well.
Focusing on reproducibility and falsifiability would go a long way to improving the current state of science, regardless of the political games happening at the same time.
To expand on that person's thought though, that's the problem: reproducibility and falsifiability don't make money, and in our system, what doesn't make money, costs money. There is absolutely zero funding out there available for studies to reproduce the results of other studies. And, in addition, any source of funding that is offered for regular non-reproducing studies also comes with expectations of the scientist in charge of the study. You can say "it shouldn't be this way" all you like but the fact remains that when a fossil-fuel company funds a study into if humans affect global climate change, they obviously have an answer in mind that they're wanting to hear, and not only that, probably sought out a scientist who has an existing reputation that implies they will deliver that answer, just as, say, a governmental probe into climate change might do the exact opposite.
Every funding organization chooses the studies to fund run by the scientists they also choose to fund with an outcome in mind. Hopefully, this is less true with Government funded research? But it's still absolutely true, and also worth noting that Government-backed research has been in a steady decline since the 1980's.
And I mean, that's just money. There is also zero career progression or public impact on reproducibility. One cannot reasonably build a sustainable career in science simply by reproducing studies. Nobody gives a shit about those. Those don't get you jobs at better, more prestigious institutions. Those don't get you interviewed on CNN. Those don't get you, hell, funding for more research you might actually want to do.
The scientific community itself is a community of people, it is not immune from the corrosive and negative aspects of any community created by humans, it inherits all our faults and foibles just the same as any other, it's affected by similar biases, it's paralyzed into the same inaction, and it caves to the same influences.
Truly neutral, unbiased thinking and therefore action is, IMHO, impossible. Anyone who says otherwise has either deluded themselves into thinking their agenda is somehow magically no agenda, or is well aware they have an agenda and wish that fact to remain unacknowledged. No one is truly neutral. Every thought you have, every action you consider, every idea that comes to mind is a totality of every previous thought, action and idea you've had and the fact that so many people claim to be unbiased or neutral doesn't change this. You're not objective, you're alive.
That doesn't mean there's no truth to be had or found, and indeed, broadly, the scientific method as outlined in our school curricula is the closest thing humanity has thus far created to a truth producing methodology. But it remains built of humans and so inherits their limitations, and we should remain cognizant of that.
Focusing on reproducibility and falsifiability would go a long way to improving the current state of science, regardless of the political games happening at the same time.