Retorts to Reviewers of Manuscripts

[mamselle]

Quote from: Myword on 27 January 2022, 15:47:04
On the "Wish you Could Say" thread...

What about retorts to reviewers of manuscripts?

  1. This paragraph or quoted author is not relevant to topic.   

Yes it is. The fact that you don't see that shows you don't understand or you disagree with it or dislike the quoted author.

   2. It makes no new contribution.   

Oh, like your writing does? You did not read this carefully, or missed it. Or perhaps you have no interest in this anyway and this is merely a courtesy review.

    3. This has been done too much already.   

You have not read the literature on this recently or you are not interested in it.  So what? Most journal articles in this field are redundant. So are you.

We could maybe start a thread on this...

I can think of a few as well...

So, have at it!

All the things you every muttered under your breath, or screamed in an open cornfield...or wanted to...

M.

[Ruralguy]

I was once told that my Physics paper had no physics in it.

I was also once told that that my contribution was the worst paper ever written by the particular group for which I worked (reviews for that journal were not blind).

I have had exactly one paper accepted without need for revision! Thank God that dude had a fishing trip that weekend (or whatever it was...).

[mythbuster]

Reviewer #2 claims that Figure 1 is unnecessary. Well figure 1 is a diagram of the experimental design. Had you fully understood the experiment, aka looked  at the %$#@ing diagram, over half of your subsequence critiques would have been answered. So I think that Figure 1 is necessary.

[darkstarrynight]

My favorite comment that I am working on is "how can you cite a source in 2022 when I received your manuscript to review in 2021? This is impossible and since I cannot access a source in the future, it must be fake."
I don't make the copyright rules! My book came out in 2019 but has a 2020 copyright. Who cares? You can find the source; heck, I got it from the library!
My coauthor's response: "We are going to blow their mind when we tell them we are from the future!"

[AvidReader]

My favorite comment that I am working on is "how can you cite a source in 2022 when I received your manuscript to review in 2021? This is impossible and since I cannot access a source in the future, it must be fake."
I don't make the copyright rules! My book came out in 2019 but has a 2020 copyright. Who cares? You can find the source; heck, I got it from the library!
My coauthor's response: "We are going to blow their mind when we tell them we are from the future!"

Probably published on the other side of the International Date Line.

AR.

[ergative]

Reviewer #2 claims that Figure 1 is unnecessary. Well figure 1 is a diagram of the experimental design. Had you fully understood the experiment, aka looked  at the %$#@ing diagram, over half of your subsequence critiques would have been answered. So I think that Figure 1 is necessary.

Heh. I had Reviewer #2 complain that I neglected to control for [variable], and so my design was fundamentally flawed. Except I also had Figure 1, a diagram of the stimulus creation, which made it perfectly clear that [variable] was meticulously controlled for.

Not that I had a chance to say that, since the paper was outright rejected, rather than R&Red.

[Parasaurolophus]

Excellent idea!

I was once told that my Physics paper had no physics in it.

I've gotten that sort of thing a few times, especially for a paper that involved quite a bit of original historical research (my point was that the evidence--which this constituted the first attempt to collect!--gave considerable weight to the philosophical view I was advancing). It was subsequently published in a T5 generalist journal, but that comment came at a low point and really left me questioning what I was doing.

My postdoc supervisor, who's, like, one of the top one or two people in the world in this subfield, got a comment a couple of years ago asking if he was an undergraduate.


My contribution comes from a recent report, in which R2 said that our paper suffered from the fatal flaw of citing the Sherlock Holmes and Poirot stories as examples of cozy mysteries (alongside Marple, Rosemary and Thyme, etc.). Apparently "there is strong reason to think that this grouping is dubious". No such reasons are offered. Never mind that these are canonical examples of foundational cozy mysteries which helped to define the genre. They're certainly not hard-boiled detective fiction or noir. WTF is R2 smoking?

[theteacher]

My favorite is a review I received last year, which has two sentences "it's difficult to be understood by readers. also, it contains many sub-figures". This was from a top journal in my field.

[statsgeek]

Your opinion about what constitutes a practically significant effect, supported by your as-yet-unpublished paper, means a lot less than you think it does. 

[bio-nonymous]

1) Well, if you would have read the extended methods section in the Online Only Supplement submitted with, and referred to in, the main manuscript, as your reviewed the paper, you would have gotten answers, and references, for your criticisms/concerns of the methods in your review and then you wouldn't have to read this response to your review--saving all of us valuable time.

2) No, I would prefer to submit the paper on the topic I wrote--not completely change it to a totally different direction and focus because of something you found interesting in the data we report. I am glad that was interesting to you, but it is a very minor part of the big picture we are presenting. Perhaps we will address that in a follow-up study...

[apl68]

When I was in grad school in history I was told early on not to use "clanking machinery" phrases along the lines of "This survey will examine X," passive voice constructions, etc.  While working on my MLS I had a prof insist that I do so.  Unsaid retort:  "Okay, if you want me to make my smoothly-running machinery clank, I'll make it clank."  And I did.

[apl68]

The NYT Book Review actually published a review in which the reviewer likened the experience of reading the book to being "trapped inside a drum being beaten by a clown."  I remember wincing when I saw that.  The next issue carried an understandably irate letter from the author.

[Hibush]

The NYT Book Review actually published a review in which the reviewer likened the experience of reading the book to being "trapped inside a drum being beaten by a clown."  I remember wincing when I saw that.  The next issue carried an understandably irate letter from the author.

The NYT Book Review is more progressive in this regard than academic journals. The "Open Review" model at some new journals do provide this kind of exchange.

[mamselle]

Imagined retort from awhile ago, apparently still simmering:

To Rev. 1: "No, I'm not doing anything like the work you're doing. For one thing, I look at the primary sources, and work from them extensively. You've bragged publicly about 'just using the secondary work, it's good enough....' . In your case, the book you wrote shows it. I should be flattered you turned my article (which locates a previously undescribed liturgical play and all the pieces it takes to perform it) down cold. You probably felt threatened by it."

To Rev. 2: "If I wanted to do deconstructive work on this piece, I'd do it, but it seemed a bit premature to throw the whole deconstructive panoply at a text that still needs to be confirmed as fully re-constructed, first. I'll leave that to the folks who like to tear things down; me, I like to build them up (and I apologize for not citing your particular article, which is in a different region and era, and is about a completely different kind of play, in my piece, as well)."

Since I'd already submitted previous, less complete versions of the piece to the other two journals that might have taken it (because I hadn't turned up a couple of the key voussoirs that would complete the narrative arc of the play and didn't think I was going to, before that) there's probably no other place to send to (a feature, or it may be a bug, of the humanities' lack of a thousand publication outlets for every known topic that the sciences enjoy).

Sic transit gloria...

M.

[Liquidambar]

I don't have access to read this paper, but the title and abstract are pretty fun...

"Dear Reviewer 2: Go F' Yourself," published a couple years ago in Social Science Quarterly
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ssqu.12824?