> and actually good and original stuff gets rejected

This isnt a new thing though.

Cantor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_Cantor%27s_th... they didnt just reject him, they basically publicly beat him down, and drove him away from math and into depression.

David Bohm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_potential spent years on the outside for having his ideas on this.

Geoffrey Hinton: was considered a quack and an outsider for YEARS because of his ideas on AI... the breakthrough he spawned was done on a shoestring of a budget (read: home pc).

Edit: I forgot John Yudkin: Pure White and Deadly, talking about how bad sugar is for you in 1972...

Rejected by the mainstream academics, and in a brutal way, happens a LOT more than we think.