1. No-one is saying it's perfect. The system does have failures, but it works, and works well, in MOST cases. Not all.
2. Sure I talk to colleagues with a good track record of getting cutting edge research published. To some degree I am one of those people. I also know people (often the same people) who've had good, cutting-edge research knocked back from high-profile journals.
3. I'm not defending a broken system. I'm saying you're wrong.
4. My PhD, career in research (at both universities and R&D institutions) and extensive publication record make me an actual scientist. Without quotes. Perhaps you could consider the possibility that RobK and I are actually experienced enough to have a broader view of the system than you?

So you had bad experiences and now the whole system is broken, rigged, whatever. That sucks. You aren't the only person to have had bad experiences. Your bad experiences don't prove that the system is broken.
The system doesn't always work perfectly, but it works well most of the time. I've seen good work shot down unfairly (because it stepped on the toes of someone with influence), but I've also seen good work that flat out contradicted leaders in the field get published. Why? Because the work was solid and the review process is usually fair. Bad papers get through sometimes and good papers sometimes fail. The system is fairly self-correcting though. If bad papers get through they usually don't get cited, or they get refuted by other papers. If good papers fail to get through then they often get published by a different journal.
Not perfect, but not broken.

Nature and Science have different criteria for acceptance than "regular" journals. They make a value judgment about whether they think it's exciting. If they don't want it, it doesn't mean it's bad, and it doesn't mean it won't get published in another high-quality journal. The grant review process, at least that I'm familiar with (which is physical sciences, and funding agencies in the UK, Australia and the US), just doesn't work the way you say. Proposals generally need to make the case that the science they are proposing is important and timely. Proposals that are rejected often fail at that hurdle (or are simply outclassed by folks who made a better case). I've never seen a proposal rejected because the work they cited was in a lower-tier journal.

And for the record, I've had a paper rejected because a reviewer didn't like some prior piece of work that I was building on. The editor - this was a reasonably prestigious journal - backed them up (unjustifiably, in my opinion) and rejected my work. None of the reviews were bad either, they said (paraphrasing): great paper, well written, interesting result, could be impactful, don't believe it because I think previous paper was wrong. I'm still sore about that 8 years later. I've had other experiences with difficult reviewers. You know what, that happens. It's not common though. Not common for me and not common for any of my colleagues or friends in different fields.

Sure, time is money. It takes time. Actual cases of fraud are rare though. They're high profile, but they're rare.

There are open journals, there are paywalled journals with some open-access articles, there are pre-print archives, you can email the corresponding author and ask for a reprint, and there are libraries with print copies of older stuff. Most institutions pay subscription fees anyway, and if you're in private industry maybe either pay up or get a guest affiliation with an institution that would get you institutional access to the relevant journals. There are ways to get paywalled articles legally and I would recommend trying them. And maybe go sit in the sunshine and listen to some uplifting music. All that bitterness and cynicism is probably bad for your health.

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http://ironvision.blogspot.com ; @drSteve1663

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened here...

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http://ironvision.blogspot.com ; @drSteve1663

thanks drsteve and robk, that confirms my impressions as an amateur following science and ecology publications.. reassuring.

one of the valuable things about slowtwitch is we get review of extraordinary claims (aero, training, race performances, whatever) by an audience of clever highly-qualified people.. not quite science but a reasonable simulacrum of it. Thanks slowman ! and Rappstar and all..