Do you or have you ever worked in science? I did for a bit and that was not my impression.

I imagine it depends heavily on the field. In some fields there are ideas that one can't seriously study because they're considered settled or can't be studied without doing more harm than any believed good that could be achieved. There are others subject to essentially ideological capture where the barrier to publish is largely determined by how ideologically aligned you are (fields linked to an identity group have a bad habit of being about activism first and accurate observation of reality second).

Probably depends on the field or even the institution. My experience is much more positive.