For all practical purposes, peer review is mostly useless today. More often than not, it's either: -a cursory glance by someone who doesn't have time to care

For all practical purposes, peer review is mostly useless today. More often than not, it's either: -a cursory glance by someone who doesn't have time to care -a highly detailed critique from someone who will either be scooped or proven wrong, so they're looking for any reason to reject the paper, good or bad -a grad student who puts in the effort but probably still lacks the experience for a good review And if peer review actually was useful then the false cure for MS [0], arsenic-based life [1], or vaccines-cause-autism [2] would all be DOA and never been published in major journals to so much PR fanfare. Heck, most of Retraction Watch wouldn't be a thing [3]. [0] https://www.statnews.com/2017/11/28/multiple-sclerosis-paolo-zamboni/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/11/28/multiple-sclerosis-paolo... [1] https://phys.org/news/2012-07-scientists-nasa-arsenic-life-untrue.html https://phys.org/news/2012-07-scientists-nasa-arsenic-life-u... [2] https://retractionwatch.com/2011/01/06/some-quick-thoughts-and-links-on-andrew-wakefield-the-bmj-autism-vaccines-and-fraud/ https://retractionwatch.com/2011/01/06/some-quick-thoughts-a... [3] https://retractionwatch.com/ https://retractionwatch.com/