As an editor for peer-reviewed journal, what would you consider appropriate in making a decision to accept a peer-reviewer's report?

When evaluating a peer-reviewed study on surface water resources used for a commercial water operation, it is expected that the reviewer will thoroughly assess the methodology, including water sampling procedures and data analysis. In addition, the reviewer should identify potential oversights and suggest necessary improvements or alternative methods. However, when an expert reviewer raises concerns, and the authors respond with contrary submissions supported by well-detailed references, how would you, as an editor or associate editor, approach this situation?

Would you solely rely on the expert panel's judgment (in this case only one reviewer is holding on maybe out of four), or would you take additional steps to independently verify some of the information provided by the reviewer? Specifically, if the reviewer’s claims are not well-supported by references, would you investigate whether their arguments are sound and scientifically valid, or would you place full trust in their expertise? Given that reviewers may sometimes make claims without proper citations, would you assess the reviewer’s overall credibility, and how would you balance the reviewers' recommendations with the authors' justifications and supporting evidence?

In this question I intend to explore whether, as an editor, you would take steps to independently assess the validity of the peer reviewer’s feedback in situations where the authors challenge the reviewer’s claims with well-supported arguments and references. Would you verify the reviewer’s arguments independently, or would you rely entirely on the reviewer’s expertise, even if their claims are not fully referenced? It's one of the problems I see with some journal peer-reviews these days, where associate editors without the benefit of expert reviewer panels, are felt without a choice to reject manuscripts because they themselves are either not experts or confident enough to reject reviewer claims, that sentimental and not really based on facts.