this study (still a preprint) was preregistered (meaning all methods and analyses were specified before the data were collected)

This is the way forward -- preregistered studies. That, together with a promise from the publisher to publish the result regardless of whether the effect is found to be significant.

When you think about it, the incentives for publishing in science have been wrong all along. The future will be different: It will be full of null results, of ideas people had that didn't pan out. But we'll be able to trust those results.