We should seriously consider and question what peer review is.

Peer review is very obviously not essential for science, as the most astounding science, which gave us the modern era we all have come to enjoy, was done without peer review.

In fact, it's well worth reading about Robert Maxwell and his influence in birthing the scientific publishing industry (yes, strangely Ghislaine Maxwell's father) and the inception of peer review. And it's well worth asking how effective peer review is at encouraging scientific progress, how effective it is at producing gatekeepers, and how it incentivizes those gatekeepers. I'd suggest it's far better at the latter, and produces poor incentives.

But in today's discourse, peer review has become unquestionable and that should make us ask more questions.