I usually think that peer review is broken, but that is because we almost always miss the point of what the actual purpose of peer review is for. Peer review is

I usually think that peer review is broken, but that is because we almost always miss the point of what the actual purpose of peer review is for. Peer review is NOT for laymen. A scientific paper is part of a much longer process of discovery which includes massive amounts of debate and argument. Papers always reflect they very edge of a field where literally the only people who can judge whether the results are plausible are peers because they are the ones who are also trying to make sense of the same phenomenon. Over time some primary research papers are singled out because they really are excellent explanations of a phenomenon most of the time however you have to go look at a review paper. Furthermore peer review is absolutely NOT about reproducibility, it is a prerequisite that says that it MIGHT be worth trying to reproduce this work or work contingent on these results being valid. There are so many reasons why a result might be wrong that it often takes fields years to figure it out and the published literature is a record of that.