That sounds tough to work in. Do people ever cross-pollinate between theoretical positions and use eachothers data without the competing theory attached, or are they completely siloed off?
Note that this all happened before the replication crisis, but I 100% wasn't surprised, having been shocked and appalled by the statistical methods used in "top" papers.
As Andrew Gelman notes, peer review doesn't help if all of your peers are wrong about the same things.