It seems our experiences have been quite different, but such is life. I'm certainly not claiming that there is no other valuable use for meetings than making specific decisions or determining the answers to specific questions. The briefing-style meeting I mentioned before is another kind of event entirely, and so is a review meeting of the kind you're describing. They should be conducted accordingly.
That said, FWIW, I found that there is a serious danger of groupthink in a review meeting if the participants haven't each taken a pass at the material independently before that meeting. There are always "loud" people and "quiet" people, and a good chairperson will be able to moderate that effect, but almost everyone seems to latch onto a trail of thought easily once the suggestion is there. That is the last thing you want, if you're trying to get multiple points of view on something during a review. In practice, I've found that can reduce review meetings to finding essentially those basic issues that a subset of the attendees would have found independently anyway, but lose the input from others. The upside is that sometimes you will explore the issues you do find more deeply, but you could do that either way.
That said, FWIW, I found that there is a serious danger of groupthink in a review meeting if the participants haven't each taken a pass at the material independently before that meeting. There are always "loud" people and "quiet" people, and a good chairperson will be able to moderate that effect, but almost everyone seems to latch onto a trail of thought easily once the suggestion is there. That is the last thing you want, if you're trying to get multiple points of view on something during a review. In practice, I've found that can reduce review meetings to finding essentially those basic issues that a subset of the attendees would have found independently anyway, but lose the input from others. The upside is that sometimes you will explore the issues you do find more deeply, but you could do that either way.