> I'm not the person you replied to, but I think that in the lay world, people do indeed think that peer review is as you've described. If it's not, then maybe it should be?

It is not, and it cannot be. It is unrealistic to expect a referee working in their free time to confirm studies that often cost millions of dollars. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what peer review is and why it is useful in popular or heavy vulgarised science.

Politicians, journalists, and university press offices are guilty of this, and they are those abusing peer review to give some studies more weight than they deserve.