Do Appearances Indicate Anything About the Quality of the Data?

I’m mired in an effort to respond to a recent post of drdrA’s over at Blue Lab Coats on the deceptively simple issue of a manuscript rejection. This post is apparently a rich vein of blog fodder because PhysioProf already responded to the issue of pleading one’s case with the editor and I am trying to follow up on BugDoc’s request to expand on a comment I posted at Blue Lab Coats. That effort is bogging down so I thought I’d take care of one little nugget.
The part of drdrA’s post which made the most steam come out of my ears was the following point advanced by one of the paper reviewers:

“poorly performed gels and western blots which need to be improved.”