Materials science postdoc here -- I recently sent a paper out for review, and got back two reasonable responses. Reviewer 1 had some nitpicks, and Reviewer 2 asked why my correlation was so low (R=0.2). I revised and resubmitted, with the big thing being the addition of some analysis showing that one sample in particular is an outlier, and actually the correlation is high (R=0.9). Reviewer 1 is happy, but Reviewer 2 (rightly, in retrospect) sent back another round and called me out on my, eh, nonsense: "Your analysis is a really convoluted way of making your data look good. It still doesn't look good, for reasons [a], [b]. and [c], plus [two pages of analysis]. Your paper is useful, it's just not as positive of a result as you say it is. Please fix this." After getting over my ego, I'm now in the midst of tearing out the analysis and adding discussion on why the paper is useful even with a less impressive result. My question for y'all is, though, how do I appropriately thank the reviewer for being steadfast in the face of my analytic nonsense? I don't want to be obsequious, but a basic "we appreciate the reviewer's refined insight regarding the work, and we're fixing" feels inadequate. submitted by /u/aedificatori [link] [comments]