This is a timely article about an important issue in the sciences. The author begins by discussing the importance given in popular media to whether articles ar

This is a timely article about an important issue in the sciences. The author begins by discussing the importance given in popular media to whether articles are peer reviewed or not, using somewhat absurd examples of foundational historical papers to stress the point. The author then makes a logical jump, and claims that "Science worships peer review". However neither the journal Science nor the discipline of the same name are capable of worshipping anything. The author might mean to say that "Scientists worship peer review"? But for such a claim the author provides little evidence, and further it would contradict the later statement that "simple inertia, and ..." are the reasons "we still have peer review". Subsequently the author tries to demonstrate that peer review is useless by stressing the multitude of problematic papers that did make it through peer review. This, of course, is a standard logical fallacy and again in direct contradiction with the latter statement that "we do not know whether the science we produce is better with or without it" (emphasis mine). As I mentioned above, it is clear that the author raises an important point and at its root the message it tries to convey is certainly valid. However the article itself adds little to what scientists (and I would wager the informed public) already know. Besides the issues mentions above, I think a further weakness is that it claims to speak for all of science but I might imagine that in a field like mathematics the act of peer review can be more meaningful. Altogether, then, I am of the opinion that the above issues need to be corrected in a substantial revision before I can accept the article for publication in your journal. Sincerely,