It’s not unclear at all. Journals are not bastions of science any longer. They are a money making scheme for already wealthy assholes. Actual scientists and researchers have been bemoaning how shitty journals are for decades.

That image haunts me. I can only assume this paper got through peer review because the reviewers saw that image and went mad, like all those who have witnessed eldritch monstrosities.

Why should the enshittification stop at the internet? Let’s enshittify the whole world for good measure.

I have published in peer reviewed journals and done a few reviews myself. It is not a perfect system. There are generally only a few reviewers. Typically others that have published in the journal in that area. The goal is not to check the work deeply and the tilt is to allowing and also trusting the authors. The other thing that shocked me, the authors generally pay quite a lot of money by the page to publish articles. Also not every journal is the same. Some hard to publish in and others easy. Some nonprofit and others profit making entities. The rush to publication and the publish or perish situation in science creates its own issues too.

This is not that much a failure of science in that it was discovered pretty quickly and presumably a retraction has been made. It is comical.

I would add that the patent system has similar issues. It is far from perfect too. Invalidating a patent is a lot more time consuming and costly and a lot less funny.