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Founder of Moderna explains that it's fortunate they weren't in academia - they would have had a tough time publishing their discoveries, due to skepticism by journal editors and reviewers. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/noubar-afeyan/
I must say, however, skepticism is unevenly distributed in academic publishing. In some areas, a p<.05 has been sufficient to publish things, even for very unlikely propositions.
Academics were happy to adopt and defend a methodology that would allow them to easily get things published by following a formula that worked even if one was noise mining. There is/was no feedback loop from additional assessments of reproducibility to correct false claims.
Back to mRNA innovations: fortunately, the rise of preprints has meant that low-prior-probability ideas can no longer be stopped by journal gatekeepers. We now need to reorganize academia's organized skepticism to ensure certain preprints get enough skeptical evaluation.
Eg https://featuredcontent.psychonomic.org/as-new-venues-for-peer-review-flower-will-journals-catch-up/
