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I'm now replying to a referee. One of his points is unambiguously wrong. Moreover, without going into specifics, he spends a lot of time on that point and asks us to do something with our framework that it cannot address. This is not stubbornness on our part since otherwise we'd be happy to accommodate requests.

But I’m terrified of writing "This comment is wrong". Even if I thereafter go into some detail as to why it's wrong, somehow I fear a backlash which we know shouldn’t be a reaction of referees but often can be.

Does anyone have any advice?

lighthouse keeper
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peter
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    Another point is: your reply is to the editor, not to the referee. But in this particular case, all you need to do is add (in the abstract, perhaps),"Our framework cannot address questions like ..." with examples including the one the referee mentioned. If that referee asked about this, then maybe other readers will also wonder about it. – GEdgar Nov 09 '17 at 13:53
  • Related, possibly duplicate? – user2390246 Nov 09 '17 at 15:42

1 Answers1

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One is allowed to, and in fact often should, respectfully disagree with parts of a review. However, stay a mile clear from the phrasing "this is wrong". Note that even if the reviewer made an objectively wrong comment, you need to respond with the assumption in mind that this happened due to an honest misunderstanding on his part, and not in bad faith.

Hence, a better phrasing may be:

We disagree with Reviewer 2 on this comment. While we show that our framework is able to do A and B, it is by design not able to do C. We understand that this was not clear enough to the reviewer, and have rephrased our motivation to make this point more clear.

Note how this phrasing does not "give in" to the reviewer, but acknowledges that part of the blame about such misunderstanding lies with the authors. Also note that you do some text changes based on this review, which I have found to generally be a good idea. I have the impression just saying "the reviewer misunderstood; we are not changing the manuscript" leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many editors.

The reviewer may in theory still insist that without C, your framework is without value, but that really cannot be helped if your system just does not do C.

xLeitix
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    +1 "We understand that this was not clear enough to the reviewer, and have rephrased our motivation to make this point more clear." This is important, and it's not only about being polite to the referee: The referee is in the target audience of your paper, and if someone in the target audience understands something wrong, then it's likely your paper can be improved. You don't want other readers to make the same mistake as the referee. – JiK Nov 09 '17 at 12:29
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    +1 for an honest misunderstanding on his part, and not in bad faith! Thanks for this phrase - it'll certainly help me to deal with future reviews, although I read and answered a lot of them already. – Dirk Nov 09 '17 at 12:36
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    "This is wrong" does not imply bad faith. – Andrés E. Caicedo Nov 09 '17 at 16:40
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    (I once received a referee report that showed that the referee lacked the appropriate technical knowledge to evaluate the paper, and several of their comments were factually wrong. It was not an issue of their "misunderstanding" anything. I pointed this out to the editor, and they agreed.) – Andrés E. Caicedo Nov 09 '17 at 16:43
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    @AndrésE.Caicedo No, it does not, but it comes across as fairly combative. You don't want that in a response letter. – xLeitix Nov 09 '17 at 17:13
  • @JiK I'm inclined to disagree with that attitude. Sadly they (the referree- committee) is more powerful than you as writer so you have to fake this niceness. However you shouldn't cater to the people who misunderstood you. If you explain something it's up to the readers to make sure they understand it, if they are too small minded to understand it, that's their problem. (Than again, you have to appease the powers that be). – paul23 Nov 10 '17 at 00:28
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    @paul23 I am not sure about your discipline, but at least in applied Computer Science your opinion is certainly not a mainstream one. Journals here very much require you to "cater" to people's understanding. Writing up good research in a hard-to-comprehend fashion is a valid reason for rejection, or at least for multiple heavy revision rounds targeted at clarity. – xLeitix Nov 10 '17 at 07:39
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    @paul23 "If you explain something it's up to the readers to make sure they understand it," - This is just wrong. It is up to you to explain things in a way that a typical worker in the subject area can understand things; your reviewer is probably more expert than most - if they can't understand you, what hope does anyone else have? – Martin Bonner supports Monica Nov 10 '17 at 08:28
  • What if its a blatant mistake by the referee? I had this happened to me in the past with the paper titled "Look , I did B" and the entire reviewer comment was "A is very done in the literature and doing A again makes no sense, this paper adds nothing". The whole point of the paper was doing B instead of A. The reviewer clearly did not take more than a second to read the title of the article. We contacted the editor in this case. Just showing that sometimes, just replying to the reviewer is not the solution. – Ander Biguri Nov 10 '17 at 12:56
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    @AnderBiguri Sometimes you don't win and your paper is rejected unfairly. I think that has happened to most people. What you don't want to add on top of that is a new enemy in the process. So you really do need to be more polite than you may be inclined to be at first even if the mistake is blatant and in your view idiotic. – Simd Nov 10 '17 at 17:13
  • @Lembik I agree, and I understand that most reviewers are doing extra work for the good of science. My point was just perhaps saying that there may be a line where you need to escalate it to the editor. Perhaps this line is only for very very extreme cases, but I think there should be a line where you need to just not accept a blatant mistake. – Ander Biguri Nov 10 '17 at 17:18
  • @AnderBiguri I agree. But even if you escalate it to the editor you still need to maintain an extra level of politeness and deference to the reviewers in your comments, even if you are 100% sure they are a complete fools :) – Simd Nov 10 '17 at 17:27
  • @Lembik oh, of course. Politeness should be the norm in any social interaction, especially where you are pointing out a conflict ;) – Ander Biguri Nov 10 '17 at 17:28