JohnDakota

Reviewer responsibilities are generally volunteer hours insofar as the peer reviewing the article isn't getting paid, or compensated in any way for the many hours/day(s) it will likely take to properly vet a piece of work. Therefore reviewers eventually blow off some articles, choosing instead to do a quick analysis and hope the other reviewers perform a more thorough analysis. Apparently, in the case of this paper, all the reviewers blew off their jobs.

The student is now a Postdoc in Brazil and the PI has since moved to Western Australia for another position. These moves happened in 2011 and 2012 respectively, according to their linkedin profiles. So unless they're still working on the project, it's unlikely the phrase 'just make up' means to put together.. rather it's more likely that it means to fabricate.

Basic elemental analysis is very easy to fake, and very hard to demonstrate it was faked.