I never struggled much with peer review. I published in almost all the top journals and funded my lab through standard peer-reviewed grants. That success didn’t mean I was being selected for the best science - it meant it was easy for me to learn how to play the game. You take your genuinely original work and ideas and reframe them around what you think reviewers want to hear.
That strategy is rewarded, but it comes at a cost. The compromises required to satisfy reviewers can blunt innovation, discourage risk-taking, and reward work that fits existing narratives over work that challenges them. What advances careers is not always what advances science.
We no longer need to rely on small, opaque panels to evaluate research quality. There is now technology capable of assessing rigor, impact, reproducibility, and downstream influence more transparently and at scale. Better systems are possible and overdue
it’s not dead, it just needs major revision