peer review is completely broken in science & medicine!
Yes...a great topic for an essay would be the parallels between the decline of journalism and the decline of academic scholarship!
Sadly. In a lot of areas, there is a lot of pressure to just...publish. I don’t think quality is they key anymore, just as long as you get something out there so you can check off a box.
Not to say there isn’t good quality research, there is just a lot of lackluster/bad/politically driven research, and the peer review process...well, it isn’t any better, and worse in some areas.