In his book, The Trouble with Medical Journals, Richard Smith (former editor of the BMJ) writes:
Our studies so far have shown that it is slow, expensive, ineffective, something of a lottery, prone to bias and abuse, and hopeless at spotting errors and fraud.The Trouble with Medical Journals - p8"
On the other hand editors, and most of the scientific community are convinced (even though it is hard to find supporting evidence for the belief), that peer review is invaluable.
A systematic review of all the available evidence on peer review concluded that:
the practice of peer review is based on faith in it's effects rather than on facts - JAMA (2002)
Let's take these one at a time: - Peer review is slow - Peer review is expensive - Peer review is ineffective
# See also - Peer Review