If anything, maybe it would help get a breakthrough published. Wasn’t the original paper on oscillating chemical reactions rejected from publication because the editor just couldn’t believe it was possible, even though the evidence was plainly visible to anyone who bothered to do the experiment? Or maybe that’s folklore, I’m not sure. Not my field. I heard the story told by that bald headed science historian on the science channel once, and I’m only going by memory.
Edit: I thought it was Al-Khalili who did the documentary, but I’m not finding it. Anyway, it’s pretty widely known that when Belousov submitted his paper for publication in the 1950’s it was summarily rejected by the editor with the reason given something along the lines of “such things don’t happen in chemistry” or words to that effect. In short, Belousov’s work was given the brush off. But maybe if there had been peer review, they could have easily replicated the experiment (not all that difficult if you have the ingredients), and maybe that would have overcome the editor’s objection. Or maybe it never would have gotten that far because the editor would have already rejected it as trash science and never parceled it out for peer review? That’s an interesting question. AFAIK, there wasn’t a formal system of peer review in those days. What exactly is the modern screening mechanism? In modern science does every submitted paper get peer reviewed automatically, to avoid the type of editor prejudice that derailed Belousov’s paper, or only the papers the editor deems potentially worthy of publication? The story (or folklore) goes that Belousov was so dejected by the unwarranted rejection that he withdrew from ever trying to get anything ever published again. Then later Zhabotinsky came along, refined the work, and managed to get it published in the 1960’s. So, at least in the long-run, or at least in this instance, the truth still manages to get out, since it’s the truth after all. One could argue that maybe Belousov gave up too easily, but it was the soviet science system, so I can’t really judge what other obstacles or penalties there might have been for re-submitting an alrealdy rejected research topic, but perhaps bolstered with un-impeachable names as co-authors or some such. Who knows? For all I know perhaps such social engineering might have been perceived as scandalous in those days. It would be an interesting topic for a science historian to explore.