This seems important. Can you crystallize more of the causality, from your reading? E.g. is it because peer review creates cabals and entrenched interests who upvote work that makes their work seem “in the hot areas”, or similar? Or because it creates wasteful work for the academics trying to conform to logistical peer review requirements? Or predatory journals select for bad editors? Or it creates an illusion of consensus, obscuring that there are gaping wide open questions? Or...?
This seems important. Can you crystallize more of the causality, from your reading? E.g. is it because peer review creates cabals and entrenched interests who upvote work that makes their work seem “in the hot areas”, or similar? Or because it creates wasteful work for the academics trying to conform to logistical peer review requirements? Or predatory journals select for bad editors? Or it creates an illusion of consensus, obscuring that there are gaping wide open questions? Or...?
I don’t feel qualified to distill, which is why I did not. I only have a fuzzy grasp of the issue myself. Your hypotheses all seem plausible to me.