Peers who remain anonymous and review research proposals and articles submitted by their scientific counterparts ....these so called experts then decide if the articles should be approved or printed..
I'm one of them. :)
Yes, there is criticism of the peer review process, but it still beats having no review by peers at all. By a long way.
Being anonymous allows reviewers to be neutral when reviewing papers by people they know. My experience is that reviewers are not nasty per se, but constructive, and WILL point out faults in reasoning and on procedures and analyses.
It's hard to publish! Some papers go through 2-3 revision steps and I'm not talking top journals.
Most journals are paid to publish, but that's to allow something called Open Access, which means that anyone can read the papers and not need a subscription. It's still hard to publish on those journals.
So, I still prefer to trust research that has gone through the peer review process, at least until a better alternative has been found.