At least in my country, I'm thankful for these quantitative measurements, that difficult corrupt practices: Oh, I assure you he's a great researcher, just not in any measurable way. He's my nephew you say? Well, that's not the point...
While this is important, in many fields their are cliques of related researchers (1) on the grants committees and (2) on the journal committees. These people know who works on which problems, so blind review is a farce.
Also, the concept of IF being a proxy for rigorous review and work quality is weak at best. Just read a few pages of
http://retractionwatch.com/
There's also less nepotistic problems. For example, I've moved between different sides of the same overall field several times. That means, for any given reader of my CV, only about half the "impressive" papers read to them as impressive using most subjective measures.
> Couldn't you just require people to recuse themselves from hiring decisions involving relatives?
They used to have this nice trick where you hired the son of your friend and your friend hired your son. But at least now there are some non-subjective requirements to be met before anyone can get admitted.
