Frank:"I have made my view of NG quite clear in the past. It is often very informative and entertaining, but it is not a peer-reviewed source of up-to-date scientific literature. "

Evidently, then, there is some kind of Darwinoid or else intelligently designed predictable hierarchy in the media. Who, then, has the authority to authoritatively assign rankings? It seems clear to me that a sycophantic collegial mechanism could be used to assemble the usual unsurprising majority votes.

Would you assert that the editorial hand wringings in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) on the conduct of educational policy across the United States of America was superior, as well as routinely *scientifically* peer reviewed, as an assured reliable matter of course?

This NEJM soap-box performance is not an isolated rare example, IMO of someone crossing ideological and discipline borders, going outside of their own most focused narrow expertise.

In brief: Scientists (too) seem to be able/allowed to play around, to independently grade their own papers/scratch each other's backs.