Ahh yes, the freedom loving state. Texas. That's right.

As much as I'm against parasitic practices, I wonder how the inevitable corruption of money would (further) skew research if academia was well paid for their papers.

Yeah I feel you. To echo your last sentence, there's that old study of money leading to increased happiness but only up to a certain point (I think it was like 75k USD pre-covid)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/rich-less-empathetic-than-poor-study-says.html

To add to this, there's been evidence that as an individual accrues more wealth, their empathy response lessens over time.

My arm chair psychologist hypothesis is that: as the individual sees their quality of life increase, they look at other human beings in deplorable conditions, and their empathy response atrophies in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.

There's a concept in the study of wealthy individuals which goes over their desire to hide impoverishment from their view.