Well... he'd still get published today just not in one of the
   more prestigious journals. I tend to agree that more prestigious
   journals _should_ favor large scale, hard-to-question studies
   because they need to stay reliable. For even with all of my
   issues about the things you can hide with big data and with
   statistical trickery, nevertheless, it's generally good science.
   Generally anyway. I'll still complain. But there's other
   journals. Can't get into Nature? Find another journal. Someone
   will take your article. Besides, you've always got arXiv and
   others. Once published, market the hell out of it online and
   write a book. That's the way things happen now. It's not perfect
   but it's effective.