In reply to Tim Vines.

So two answers, neither of which you may find satisfying...

Firstly it's not either/or. A sexual display characteristic can be advantageous in some settings/senses. I believe for instance that a case for this is made in terms of some antlers. They are both a display ornament but are under direct selection for utility in some form of fighting. I don't think its necessarily the case that there being some adaptive value removes the effect of sexual selection?

But I can make a stronger case, if we say this isn't an analogy. That there is a culture/shared practice under selection. In this case I could make the point that "academics consistently say" is exactly what you'd expect, regardless of whether it is true, because the cultural equivalent of co-selection in both sexes is exactly that buy in. Now I'm probably mangling Hartley and Potts' argument and its likely a hard sell for a biologist (or for someone with a background in evolutionary molecular biology like me for that matter) but I think the argument is worth pursuing.

One of the things I find frustrating about discussions of peer review is how little real data we actually have. We know that "academics say..." lots of things about what works and what doesn't but we have little external evidence beyond those opinions. I would love to see real data that showed that articles were or were not improved. I know I'm a sceptic but I can point to at least two of my articles made substantially worse by peer reviewers.