What are some of the funniest and/or most brutal reviewer comments you’ve gotten on a paper?

r/

Doesn’t have to be just reviews on a paper – can be any kind of feedback or commentary you’ve received over the years. All those “the author misspelt their name” reviewer comment stories always give me a good chuckle lol

Comments

  1. Distinct_Armadillo Avatar

    The conclusion of the first article I ever submitted said “Further research is warranted.” When it was rejected, the editors flagged that sentence and wrote “We agree.”

  2. thewinterphysicist Avatar

    I wrote my first ever paper as an UG, and it was just on some simulations I had run using a widely-used open-source code. All we were doing was confirming some experimental data. One of the reviewers accused me of “maliciously attempting to mislead the public.”

  3. dragmehomenow Avatar

    “So you’re saying that when different people do different things, they get… different results?”

    That’s such a hater comment I’ve started to use it as an academic insult.

  4. DrShadowstrike Avatar

    Not funny, but I was once told that my writing needed editing because it was clearly written by a non-native English speaker. I *am* a native English speaker, despite my foreign sounding name.

  5. ProfPathCambridge Avatar

    I was asked by eLife to do longitudinal brain biopsies on multiple sclerosis patients. Despite pointing out that was clinically impossible and unethical, and dealing with every other issue, the editor upheld it and rejected the paper.

  6. Ok-Income9731 Avatar

    I’m in an HCI-related field, and we ran a study that happened to include alpacas as part of a fictional task. A reviewer commented, “Best alpaca study I’ve read this year”—which is funny, because it’s probably the only alpaca study our field has ever seen.

    After many more years in the field, I’m now 100% certain I know who the reviewer was—and they absolutely meant it as a joke. respect

  7. dianacarmel Avatar

    One reviewer told me I didn’t need to include details about my ethical clearance “as though this is a grad paper” (in a study with humans who were exposed to trauma, submitted to a journal that requires such disclosure).

    Another (or maybe the same?) asked me to adjust my paper’s margins, not realizing that the submission platform automatically adjusts them so that line numbers can be added to the draft manuscript.