> My goal in doing work and writing papers is to see them disseminated. The acceptance/rejection process is asinine -- studies show it's basically random. I've had one paper in my whole career where the reviewers did a proper review (e.g. worked through the math). The rest were quick skims. Comments often show the reviewers never read the paper. The stuff that makes it through this process is often nonsense, while very high-quality work is often cut.
Because the leaders are the people who made their careers in the current system and they wouldn't benefit from making things more meritocratic. These are the people who argues endlessly saying meritocracy is bad for reason X or reason Y, they just want to keep their current privileges.
How come this is not fixed ?