Why do we trust journals at all, instead of the community of respected scientist?

We could capture a network of trust among scientists, where individual scientists vet other scientists and articles. Think of it as ScienceRank, a PageRank where the nodes are individual scientists and the individual articles they publish, and the links are publish, review, reproduce and consistent-with events:

    - scientist A published article X
    - scientist B gave a positive peer review of article X
    - scientist B gave a positive peer review of scientist A
    - scientist B gave a negative peer review of article X
    - scientist B gave a negative peer review of scientist A
    - scientist C independently reproduced the experiment in article X
    - scientist C failed to independently reproduce the experiment in article X
    - article Y is consistent with article X
    - article Y is inconsistent with article X

Trust would flow from trusted scientists. Scientists gain and lose trust via the positive and negative reviews they or their publications receive. The algorithm would be a little more complex than PageRank's, given the different treatment required for the different links.

Technology could be a multiplying force in the positive direction instead.