Do we need more academics that agree with the status quo? If you reframe your point as "academia selects for originality," it wouldn't seem such a bad thing. Research requires applied creativity: creating new ideas that are practically useful. A researcher who concludes that the existing solution to a problem is the best is only marginally useful.

The debate between Chalmers and Dennett is practically useful, because it lays out the boundaries of the dispute and explores both sides of the argument. Chalmers is naturally more of a contrarian and Dennett more of a small c conservative; people fit into these natural categories without too much motivation from institution incentives.

The creative process can be split into idea generation and idea evaluation. Some people are good at generating wacky, out-there ideas, and others are better at judging the quality of said ideas. As De Bono has argued, it's best for there to be some hygiene between the two due to the different kinds of processing required. I think there's a family resemblence here with exploration-explotation trade-offs in ML. 

TL;DR I don't think that incentives are the only constraint faced by academia. It's also difficult for individual people to be the generators and evaluators of their own ideas, and both processes are necessary.

Do rational communities undervalue idea generation because of their focus on rational judgement?