I think the takeaway here for anyone who hasn't studied marketing is to do so, and to learn how to be the first one to get your story out there.

Changing someone's opinion after they've heard a story explained differently is an uphill battle, so if you believe you're right you have to take a risk sometimes and get out there first.

At a grossly simplistic level aside from simply not "cheating" at sampletime, are there changes to publication requirement which could ameliorate this?

I think a steeper hill to climb might be minimum sample cohorts and neutral party randomly assigned.

Does anyone offer a certified sample aggregation/distribution function?