There’s a bit of truth to that in low level journals, because these days there are so many journals, so many predatory publications preying on the need to publish and pad out CV’s in academia that there are large volumes of publications from especially from countries like China, India and Korea that are quantity over quality. These days it is hard to find a qualified peer reviewer because the system is truly busted and academic peer reviewer is wasting their precious time while not getting compensated. And this is not to say the same behavior is not rewarded in western academia, Asian academics just have more hustle in them to prove themselves.

But in the example above, this excuse is pure cope. Nature is the highest impact factor journal with one of the strictest peer review. Many old and crusty western academics, as well as eager and overly critical young postdocs are eager to tear apart papers submitted to Nature, if anything just to also virtue signal to the editors that they are smart and critical scientists so that next time they submit their papers to nNature the editor will cut them some slack. Publishing in Nature is definition of publishing high impact high quality work.