"which was never designed to catch fraud anyway." Exactly. This isn't a good system that got off the rails; it was always a gatekeeper system that ensured that new insights had to stay in line with current orthodoxy.

When I submit something for peer review, there are two options: I get youg reviewers (who want the exposure and the glory), or I get old reviewers who have the reputation and like to engage in "field control". The young ones are usually dogmatic and eager to prove their worthiness; they will tear you apart over BS to prove how much they've read to the journal editors. The old ones have a legacy to defend, and want to make sure that "what they found out" is not abandoned by snotty youth. Either way, if your paper goes against orthodoxy,. it has a hard time. Worse if it tries to use insights from one side of the subject to augment another side of the subject, because in all likelihood, the Old Ones have mad a career of trashing that other side. The editors will likely send the article to one "representative" of each side, each one of which will trash the half of the paper you're trying to adapt to their field. Worse if you're challenging a "basic understanding" in that field; then, all of them will trash you.

This is old news, of course. Read Kuhn about the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, still unmatched, about how science is generational and political to defend given orthodoxies; though he's optimistic about how revolutions arise when generations change.