This is almost an apples/oranges comparison.
There's research and then there's research.
Yes, all approved medicines are the result of medical research. But approving medicines isn't the entirety of medical research.
I'm sure you've heard of the adage: egos are large when the stakes are low. This is related to that. The push to "get published" is so great that if you know that your research has no practical effect or that it won't affect anyone, you can kind of make up whatever results you want. As long as it publishes. The goal isn't to find the truth or to answer a question, the goal is to get a byline in a paper. And you get more and better bylines by discovering something radical and novel rather than by saying "Nope, doesn't work, just like expected".
On the flip side, when the results really matter, you'll find people do proper due diligence. Especially when your results will be essentially confirmed practically by billions of people on the planet. When the stakes are high, we wind up being way more cautious.
Of course, I hear your meta-concern. Because, yes, people will use this paper to pull the "Science is a lying bitch"* card. But it is also an issue that must be dealt with or at the very least acknowledged. As the article itself notes, someone did notice it in the 80s, but due to very concern of casting doubt on medical research, they kind of just hoped it wouldn't be an issue. And now the issue is too great to deal with simply.
In the end, medical, and really all scientific, research cannot be "hit driven". Failure must be an option. And if this month's issue of The BMJ is a bit "boring" or "thin", then so be it. The focus must be more on finding the correct answer rather than the flashier answer. Even when the stakes are small.
*Science is a lying bitch: From the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense". One of the characters uses the fact that certain noted scientists had incomplete ideas about certain scientific phenomenon or weren't completely right on every subject as proof that science itself was flawed and couldn't be trusted on the subject of evolution and therefore one should believe the biblical account of creation because the bible hasn't been changed since it was written.