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].
I'd want to hear that out and make sure I'm not mistaking "I've done some prior work that enriches yours" for "You should have cited my paper" or "You're not communicating clearly and succintly" for "insufficient jargon"
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...
[1] https://phys.org/news/2012-07-scientists-nasa-arsenic-life-u...
[2] https://retractionwatch.com/2011/01/06/some-quick-thoughts-a...
[3] https://retractionwatch.com/