I think you might be conflating assessments of importance with assessments of soundness. Referees often disagree intractably on importance, and its been shown t

I think you might be conflating assessments of importance with assessments of soundness. Referees often disagree intractably on importance, and its been shown to be a very poor predictor of future important results. But referees disagree much more rarely on soundness, and when they do they are often resolved through discussion. Papers that are sound but deemed uninteresting get published elsewhere. The importance checking is debatable, but soundness checking is crucial and reasonably objective.