Does "Down the rabbit hole“ mean "a mysterious journey"(Alice in Wonderland)?

Context:

The rejections tell a story of their own. Some open-access journals that have been
criticized for poor quality control provided the most rigorous peer review of all. For
example, the flagship journal of the Public Library of Science, PLOS ONE, was the
only journal that called attention to the paper's potential ethical problems, such as
its lack of documentation about the treatment of animals used to generate cells for
the experiment. The journal meticulously checked with the fictional authors that
this and other prerequisites of a proper scientific study were met before sending it
out for review. PLOS ONE rejected the paper 2 weeks later on the basis of its
scientific quality.
Down the rabbit hole
The story begins in July 2012, when the Science editorial staff forwarded to me an
e-mail thread from David Roos, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The
thread detailed the publication woes of Aline Noutcha, a biologist at the University
of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. She had taken part in a research workshop run by Roos
in Mali in January last year and had been trying to publish her study of Culex
quinquefasciatus, a mosquito that carries West Nile virus and other pathogens.

More:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full