It is absolutely the reviewers job to check citations. Who else will check and what is the point of peer review then? So you’d just happily pass on shoddy work because it’s not your job? You’re reviewing both the authors work and if there were people to at needed to ensure citations were good, you’re checking their work also. This is very much the problem today with this “not my problem” mindset. If it passes review, the reviewer is also at fault. Not excuses.
The problem is most academics just do not have the time to do this for free, or in fact even if paid. In addition you may not even have access to the references. In acoustics it's not uncommon to cite works that don't even exist online and it's unlikely the reviewer will have the work in their library.
building on imaginary someone else? That's exactly the same as lying. Is a review not about verifying that the paper and even data is correct? I get reviewers can make mistakes, but this seems like defending intentional mistakes.
I mean, in college I have had to review papers, and so took peer review lectures, and nowhere in there was it ever stated that citations are not the reviewer's job. In fact, citation verification was one to the most important parts of the lectures, as in, how to find original sources (when authoring), and how to verify them (when reviewing).
