Source: Hacker News
Article note: I suspect a lot of that now is because of niche capture as a winning academic career strategy.
If you're working in a specialist area, any kind of blind review is bogus because the primary handful of people publishing in that niche know each other and what they're working on. They are usually aligned into one or more shared-stance cabals lead by the first person or handful of people to establish themselves in that particular niche, and filled out largely by their current and former students and collaborators. Those groups are then the established experts in the area and review, consciously or not, to ensure that them and theirs get published and anything that challenges their stance/narrative/methods/choke-hold doesn't.
I think everyone who has spent much time in academia has a few pieces of "un-publishable work" tucked away, not because it was bad work, but because it would be inconvenient for someone with clout in the area and is thus not worth the hassle.
I sure have a couple, and I'm not exactly senior.
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