To reduce unjustified requests for citation, Barnett suggests that reviewers should always state in their review comments when they recommend authors cite their work and why.

Or, now hear me out here, we scrap the entire horseshit system and replace it with one where "peer review" means peer reproduction of the results. Science doesn't care if your peers agree with it. It only cares if it works.

If a field is subjective enough to be controlled by peer review rather than actual results, then it isn't science, and they should stop being conflated.