It is an ongoing problem with psychology. Psychology desperately wants to be a real science, and puts a lot of effort into teaching and emphasising the scientific method, statistics, etc, to the point that most of the emphasis on the scientific method came from my psychology classes, but somehow the people who choose psychology as their field of research seem to be more interested in spectacular results than in proper science. Psychology's history is steeped in unscientific thinking and elevating hypothesis to theory without proper scientific rigor, and it's struggling to free itself from that history. Keeping experiments like this in high regard is part of the problem.

Anyone who goes all around talking about one thing that they did back in the 70s the way he does is hard to take seriously. That and anytime he's interviewed on the subject he'll be very clear that 'attempting to do his study anywhere on Earth would be impossible now'. Brings to mind how Jerry Seinfeld would never race anyone after he beat the fast kid decades earlier[0].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akANwligs2E