That's because reviewers of experimental papers are not expected to reproduce experiments. In theoretical physics or mathematics a reviewer absolutely should f

That's because reviewers of experimental papers are not expected to reproduce experiments. In theoretical physics or mathematics a reviewer absolutely should follow the proofs and check they are sound. The humanities (as opposed to the social sciences) are theory fields, they don't have experiment but they advance knowledge by good arguments that require real scholarship to support even if they don't have crispness of proofs. Someone reviewing it should go "Yep, that paper make a real claim and argues for it well enough that convincing counter-argument would need to be a significant work of scholarship in itself". If a field of study produces a conversation made up of such arguments and counter-arguments, then it stands some chance of being growing repository of truth. Whereas if the field can't distinguish between it's own chatter and a hoax guided by mood affiliation, then the field is likely to be just chatter.