The proven downside is the money/time spent on it. And plenty of that "volunteer" time is time researchers would otherwise have spent on research. (Note: I'm no

The proven downside is the money/time spent on it. And plenty of that "volunteer" time is time researchers would otherwise have spent on research. (Note: I'm not counting the time spent doing the review and feeding that back to the researcher — that can be valuable. I am counting time spent doing countless revisions just to please a reviewer, time spent resubmitting work elsewhere, etc.) And don't get me started on money wasted on price-gouging publishers thanks to their role as gatekeepers of career credentials. The question is not why scientists spend time doing peer review. The question is: why do academics waste time bending over backwards to adapt to the whims of a particular reviewer even beyond when they feel the input is useful? (And the answer is above: the career credentials.) Again, I'm not agains peer review by itself. But it should not be a gatekeeper to publication, nor have this much leverage on people's careers (a binary decision for every article).