Indeed. There is a lot of talk in my field equating large variance in reviews with bad reviewing, but sometimes it's just because we are humans. Take for examp

Indeed. There is a lot of talk in my field equating large variance in reviews with bad reviewing, but sometimes it's just because we are humans. Take for example a paper that presents a very innovative method, but with subpar results; and another one that presents an incremental improvement on some existing method, but with results that advance the state of the art. Which is better? Even if you ask knowledgeable, careful and honest reviewers, you will get contradictory responses, because it's highly subjective whether you rate originality as more important than results or vice versa (and other factors, like whether you think the first method can eventually be improved to be useful or not, which is often just an educated guess). I see this happening all the time, and I don't think it's something that can be "fixed", it's just how humans work.