I asked once why he was working at a mid-level manufacturing company in the US.
He said it was because that any university research lab was run by "Steady Freddy" and your results had to fit into the model of what was already agreed on to be true.
I doubt US universities are any different.
Back in the 1980's friends of mine studying anthropology at FSU complained that any discovery that was incongruent with accepted timelines was rejected and written off to bad collection technique or bad data. They would not accept, not matter how well documented, a discovery that went against the accepted timeline.
One student shared how they, on a dig in New Mexico, discovered pottery shards and tools in a layer indicating they were well over 20,000 years old. Since that is older than the established timeline for Native Americans to be living in North America, the student must have made a mistake. They had photographs, samples from earlier established layers, all kinds of supporting evidence, but the professor refused to acknowledge the find and threatened the student with being ejected from the program.
Now the existence of Paleo-indians is pretty much accepted and while these finds would be very early, it wouldn't be outside the bounds of "accepted" academia, but 40 years ago?