If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant.

It is typical for implicit status hierarchies of influence and esteem to emerge in interpersonal encounters, especially those that are goal oriented.

Promoting open and critical and respectful scientific discourse seems like a pretty good goal to me.

In these unfiltered, un-moderated social media posts people are speculating about others' motivations. And you could no more put that in a peer review for a journal than you could fly.

I think there's a huge difference between describing norms in a vivid way and singling out individual people.

If you have an effect that nobody can replicate, then your phenomenon fades away. So if you want to to have a legacy, then you jolly well better have an effect that replicates.

If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant.