Peer Review as Brand Creation (Link, CMI)

Here is an article by CMI:

Creationism, Science and Peer Review
Published: 2 February 2008 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/creationism-science-and-peer-review

It involves a great quote:

But unbeknownst to the media, the journals at the top got there because of herd behavior by researchers, not because they are better than lower-tier journals at vetting research quality. Here’s why: Researchers submit their best work to the top journals, which can therefore afford to maintain their prestige by rejecting, not publishing, many high quality papers. That’s brand creation—not science. Most of their editorial effort goes into deciding which submitted papers are sufficiently newsworthy. Anonymous peer review by jealous competitors has its merits, but it has a tendency to select for fashionable if relatively unoriginal and inoffensive papers … although these reports often do not substantively advance scientific knowledge, and many subsequently are invalidated.

Cited as from:

Stossel, T., Mere Magazines, The Wall Street Journal, 30 December 2005.