One answer: anyone can start a journal, there are no laws or standards. Peer reviewers are busy and don't always have the background to criticize every aspect o

One answer: anyone can start a journal, there are no laws or standards. Peer reviewers are busy and don't always have the background to criticize every aspect of a paper. Another: not all research can or should have randomized studies (like it just wouldn't make sense if you were, say, determining the structure of a protein). So drawing the line as to what does and doesn't need a specific approach is blurry, and really, can only be enforced during the peer review process, or by the editor. On the other hand, this kind of work can still serve as a hypothesis generator. Someone else will read this, think, "well they did this all wrong!" and perform a better study that clearly demonstrates whether it has an effect or not.