Unfortunately this is all true too. Not only that but the people that are allowed to do peer reviews, at least in biology, are people that have their Registered

Unfortunately this is all true too. Not only that but the people that are allowed to do peer reviews, at least in biology, are people that have their Registered Professional Biologist ticket. I don't know what it's like for other sciences but for your RPBio you needed something like 5 years of professional experience, your own published, peer reviewed paper and to pay a yearly fee of $10000. Their the ones that get to sign off on projects. I really disliked working in science honestly. The work itself was really cool, but it's so full of politics and people fighting for scraps of money. You get people who manage to do absolutely nothing but sign their name on projects and review papers for a living. They make good money while doing nothing. I've seen prominent a biologist steal the grant money from a park he pretended to be working with, a government biologist straight up owned by a copper mine that was paid off to ignore any damage being caused by the mine and just a whole culture of money first. The science part of doing science was really the last thing anyone cared about.