The point of peer review is to stop bad research, not fake research. The reviewers are supposed to make sure that the methods used to acquire the data are clearly documented and that the conclusions drawn from the data follow from the data that was collected.

They can't verify that the data collected actually was collected without literally watching over the shoulder of the researcher while the researcher was collecting it, which is obviously not feasible. A researcher actively trying to deceive the reviewer with fake data but with a good method for collecting that data and analysis of the data that would be correct if the data were real is not something that should be caught by a reviewer. That should be caught by someone reproducing the research after publication.

>The point of peer review is to stop bad research, not fake research

I would submit that "fake research" is, in fact, bad research.

To a reviewer with three hours to spare, fake research is indistinguishable from good research. Unless you want to give me months to review a paper, I will not be able to detect fraud.

Instead I rely on the fact that the community will attempt to integrate these ideas after publication and arrive at the conclusion that the paper was garbage.

If you only have three hours, can't detect fraud, can't tell if the the paper is even real. Then what's the point of even doing the peer review? Again, peer review offered no value at all in this case.

Peer review can still inspect whether the evidence presented in a paper would—if not fabricated—truly be enough to support the paper's conclusion. Mistaken analysis of honestly collected data, improper experimental methods, flawed proofs, etc. can all show up at review time.

You can certainly come to that conclusion if you'd like. Arxiv exists. But "peer review isn't especially usrful" and "these entire fields are nonsense" are very different conclusions.

Where did you learn that the whole point of peer review is to detect fraud?

The Wikipedia article on peer review says "Peer review...occasionally detects fraud, but is not designed to do so."[1]

The article cites a Nature article that says "Peer review is not currently designed to detect deception, nor does it guarantee the validity of research findings. It should, however, identify flaws in the design, presentation, analysis and interpretation of science and provide prompt, detailed, constructive criticism to improve research."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review

[2] https://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05007....