Dear Prof. Alejandro Bortolus

I read the title first, then if it convinces me with a powerful and well-established vocabulary, I continue with the abstract. That small exercise gives an initial picture that tells if continuing or not the process of reading and understanding the paper.

Sometimes in my field of expertise, manuscript titles contain the name of a scientist (who has discovered an effect), right away I go to the references to see if the name with the classical paper is cited or not.

Surprisingly sometimes the classical paper does not appear in the references

Kind Regards.

Alejandro Bortolus re: responding to an article in your field of expertise that has misleading concluding? I believe that you, the reader has a responsibility to respond as a professional, so, your initial communication should be a professional response to the corresponding author.

However, to preclude personal bias, you should first - without any mention of your initial misgivings - ask a peer or two in your field to read and respond to the article. If your mini-peer review concurs, then the professional response is to first contact the corresponding author. Subsequent communications could then be escalated and addressed to or include the Journal. That could be in the form of a formal reply, would be important to get the matter 'on the record.'

• If the 'misleading' statements are on the level of professional disagreement, then to be sure, cite and criticize the work appropriately in your next relevant article or in a focused critique of the initial paper.
• If the matter is egregious opinionation, then under the rubric of 'not feeding the trolls,' I would suggest not referencing or citing it or giving it further credence and pursue it only in formal replies in the journal or calls for retraction.

Just my opinions.

Cheers,

Leo

Alejandro Bortolus by the way, just fyr, the image used on this page has an author Studiotoks and may have copyright restrictions. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/wtf-businessman-puzzled-confused-pop-art-764380384

Cheers,

Leo

Thank Pedro L. Contreras E. and Leo Atwood for sharing your thoughts

Indeed, as Leo implies, there seems to be a "most correct" or "appropriate" (professional?) way to act depending on your profession. However, I think there are also valid/legal/professional alternative options that authors/researchers choose. Let's take for instance the REPLIES:

Contemporary researchers know that when you submit a Reply to protest for what you consider a bad article, the Eitorial normally gives the last word to the original authors, who normally have their interpretation of the REPLY which not always is a good interpretation, and maybe not even a correct one. Correct or not, the exchange normally stops right there, with 3 steps: Article-> Reply-> Response, and the researchers having the last word (original authors) tend to be favored in these mini-debates. I don´t remember a case with more than those 3 steps (and even if there are cases, they are rare). So, if you are the researcher writing the Reply, you know that you won´t get the last word and that your point is likely to be unfairly obliterated and forgotten. I tend to think that this mechanism is currently discouraging authors from writing replies, and that's why I am trying to gather more opinions on that. Because then, the question is what do researchers do? What options do they consider they have and which one do they select?

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Leo, the image is gone. thanks for pointing that out

Alejandro Bortolus re: What options do they consider [After the response letter or alternatives to ‘Matters Arising’]

If the formal journal process is continued, the next step would be to write a full response paper and engage in having it published.

The only other option seems to be to continue in other media, like a discussion of the paper here on ResearchGate, in other similar topical web discussions, or in a personal blog posting that elaborates on the paper and your responses to it.

• See this post for other forum examples: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2385/is-there-a-good-site-for-holding-online-discussions-of-scientific-papers

Your observation that the original authors tend to have the last word is correct: “The comment is usually reviewed, but authors of replies have the last unreviewed word, which is contrary to the process of peer-review.” Efforts can be made to lobby and advocate for better journal practices- particularly: “Referees should be as critical of comment papers [including replies to comments] as they are of regular submissions and make sure they have significant merit before recommending acceptance.” [pm if you need a copy]

Not to belabor the the obvious, but just for background for readers who find or follow your initial post, here is a valuable paper on ResearchGate that explores fundamental questions about the need to reply. Worth reading.

• Smilansky, S. Do You Have to Reply to This Paper?. Philosophia 49, 1361–1368 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00294-3

Article Do You Have to Reply to This Paper?

And another basic background reference here on RG:

• Simmons MP. Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Reply Paper. PLoS Comput Biol. 2015 Oct 8;11(10):e1004536. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004536. PMID: 26448197; PMCID: PMC4598159.

Article Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Reply Paper

Cheers,

Leo

Hello Dr Alejandro Bortolus

I agree with Leo Atwood and I note in one of his posts, he used the word "responsibility". To me, that is the single most important key word. I have a responsibility - to other readers and to society, generally to promote what is morally correct.

Most welcome, Prof. Alejandro Bortolus interesting thread.

Kind Regards.

I can't say that I have ever experienced this.