Peer review in academia may very well be like the suppression of prostitution in Aquinas' thought: yeah, prostitution is really bad, but if you try to suppress

Peer review in academia may very well be like the suppression of prostitution in Aquinas' thought: yeah, prostitution is really bad, but if you try to suppress it, things will become far worse. The prudent statesman, while rightly repulsed by prostitution as such, humbly recognizes the limits of his power to constrain human vice through legal means. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to encourage a populace toward self-reflection and self-discipline that don't involve legal suppression.