Peer review: Gold standard or gold in them thar hills?

Here is a piece I just put up elsewhere, in five parts, on peer review.

Introduction

Part One: If peer review always worked before, why doesn’t it work now?

Part Two: How bad can it get? Pretty bad.

Part Three: How the system is slowly becoming more open and dynamic, whether anyone wants it to or not

Part Four:How will we know if a more open system works better?