[roel_v]

shrug Sure, theoretically, but someone who wants to ensure a positive review can just as easily collude with someone who didn't do any of the work. And then still - yes it's possible that a completely bogus paper gets signed off on by a dishonest conspirator, but the editor should see the discrepancy between that and the reviews of the other authors, and dig deeper. But the real problems start in the grey zone; like when you're on the fence between 'reject' and 'major revisions'. There is no 'objective' truth there and quite honestly as an author it's a crap shoot and always has been. It sucks the first few times it happens but none of leads to 'peer review being broken'.

[nl]

To add to this - there are plenty of issues with peer review, but someone deliberately avoiding an authorship so they can peer review seems low down the list of real world problems.