[ribosometronome]

>It's worth pointing out that most of the best science happened before peer review was dominant.

It's worth pointing out that most of everything happened before peer review was dominant. Given how many advances we've made in the past 50 years, so I'm not super sure everyone would agree with your statement. If they did, they'd probably also agree that most of the worst science also happened before peer review was dominant, too, though.

[jovial_cavalier]

Our advances in the last 50 years have largely been in engineering, not science. You could probably take a random physics professor from 1970 and they'd not sweat too much trying to teach physics at the graduate level today.

[telotortium]

But a biology professor from that time period would have a lot of catching up to do, perhaps too much, especially (but not only) if any part of their work touched molecular biology or genetics.