I cite Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, a couple of times in The Hockey Stick Illusion. Smith was a pioneer of the formal study of peer review and his work has led him to believe that the technique is well past its sell-by date. He has recently published a very cogent summary of his views. Although Smith speaks naturally of the medical sciences, `Classical peer review: an empty gun' applies equally to other fields.
The article is full of good quotes. Take this for example:
Doug Altman, perhaps the leading expert on statistics in medical journals, sums it up thus: 'What should we think about researchers who use the wrong techniques (either wilfully or in ignorance), use the right techniques wrongly, misinterpret their results, report their results selectively, cite the literature selectively, and draw unjustified conclusions? We should be appalled. Yet numerous studies of the medical literature have shown that all of the above phenomena are common. This is surely a scandal'