[qfwfq_]

I've also seen this happen, where an article was designed in pre-consultation with a journal editor in my field. We submitted (what I felt was) a dubious paper initially. Reviews were very harsh, but the paper was not rejected. I was amazed we had four months to revise and resub. It was eventually published. I was an early grad student at the time, so I didn't know that this was unusual.