on the academic review proces

organizers of the nips conference (major machine learning conference) have conducted a study to see how arbitrary is the review process

see 

http://inverseprobability.com/2014/12/16/the-nips-experiment/

and number of comments

http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2014/12/the-nips-experiment.html

http://hunch.net/?p=467864

personal experience

http://www.aarondefazio.com/tangentially/?p=21