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Fairness and efficiency are often at odds. As a reviewer, I was sometimes asked to review papers from unknown authors at unknown institutions. My level of effort was likely proportional to how well I knew the quality of the institution from which the paper came. There is a great deal of time involved in understanding a paper well enough to do a full review.

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It's true, unfortunately. When I was a TA and graded homework I'd learn which students did well over time and generally would put less effort into checking their work because generally it was more likely to be correct. They were also more likely to self-correct, and to present work well, etc. Reviewing papers isn't really too different.

I agree. I'm in an applied computational field, that attracts a lot of computational and mathematical researchers that don't have knowledge of the applied system. I've learned from experience that often researchers new to the field make a whole lot of poor assumptions and modeling decisions, even if the mathematical part is fine. For better or worse, I'm going to more heavily scrutinize the details of a paper from a lab I haven't heard than I am one that I believe has a strong track record. That doesn't mean I'll give a pass for the latter, I'll still read it with a critical eye. But certain types of trust build up over time.

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