I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…
It also seems unlikely that a patent clerk, even one with a PhD in physics, would be allowed to publish in a physics journal today. The gatekeeping has gotten a lot more strict.
This article mentions Einstein being offended that his paper was submitted to peer review by Physical Review, and submitting it elsewhere instead:
"We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorised you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the – in any case erroneous – comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere."
I just recently ended up there via this blog: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall...
which argues, not unconvincingly IMO, that peer review is a failed experiment which tries to stop bad science at the price of also stopping brilliant, unconventional science, where instead we would profit more from letting the scientific public do the sorting instead of hand-picked specialists. The author phrases it as science being as strong as its strongest links, not as weak as the weakest one, and we should do everything to get the brilliant crazy ideas.