Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry Oldenburg (1619-1677), a German-born British philosopher, is recognised as the father of modern scientific peer review. The journal Nature made it standard practice in 1973, and the term "peer review" itself did not enter common usage until the early 1970s.
Top journals reject over ninety percent of submitted papers. Reviewers are anonymous experts in the relevant field who have no connection to the author and cannot be pressured.
Ishaq ibn Ali al-Ruhawi (854-931) described a peer review system in his work the Ethics of the Physician. It required visiting physicians to keep duplicate notes of patient care, which a local medical council would examine after the patient recovered or died to assess whether treatment met professional standards.
California is the only US state to mandate scientific peer review. In 1997, the governor signed Senate Bill 1320 (the Sher bill), requiring that scientific findings underpinning any CalEPA rule-making be submitted for independent external scientific peer review. The requirement is incorporated into California Health and Safety Code Section 57004.
Role duality occurs when a person is simultaneously an evaluator and someone being evaluated. Research has found that this parallel position leads evaluators to make strategic choices intended to improve their own chances of receiving a positive assessment, introducing bias into the process.
A survey conducted by Nature confirmed through interviews that artificial intelligence is being used, sometimes without disclosure, to assist with or carry out peer review. A small number of documented cases involve scholars inserting human-invisible prompts into their preprints specifically to influence any automated reviewing system.