I think it's in a dire state.
I'm all for the general public having access to research, but at the end of the day the research is delivered to them by a 3rd party who most of the time deliver their own conclusions rather than the objective answers, or are misinterpreted by the public itself. On top we now have media pushing how scientific results are absolute and shouldn't be refuted or antagonized, creating a sense of distrust between scientific research and the general public, not to mention companies who pay for research in their favor in which they adjust the data until they obtain the desired results. As a final nail in the coffin, we also have humanitarians pushing for psychology, gender theory, chicanx studies, etc. as science which discredits the other fields and stops people from taking them seriously.