You read a journal article that “proves” that your life’s work is wrong. Fortunately, you realize that the paper is totally wrong, so you decide to write a comment – the option provided by scientific journals to correct such errors. The procedure for doing this is very simple. You prepare by reading previous comments in the journal, all three pages long. You e-mail the paper’s authors, politely asking for key parameters they omitted. Receiving no response, you determine the parameters instead from the authors’ graphs. You write and submit your comment.

You receive the journal’s response: “Your comment is 2.39 pages long. Unfortunately, it cannot be considered until it is less than 1.00 pages long.”

So you remove all non-essential items, such as figures, equations and explanations, and resubmit your comment. The journal’s response is now “Your comment is 1.07 pages long. Unfortunately, it cannot be considered until it is less than 1.00 pages long.” You remove frivolous linguistic luxuries like adjectives and adverbs, and resubmit, noting a detailed three-page comment in the latest issue of the journal. You also answer questions from competitors regarding the fraudulence of your life’s work and how you got away with it for so long.

You receive the reviews of your comment. Reviewer #3 likes it. Reviewer #2 hates it for taking issue with a great paper that finally debunked your terrible work. Reviewer #1, however, feels it was too short to understand. The editor writes that no decision can yet be made and suggests expanding your comment to three pages. Adjectives, adverbs, figures, equations and explanations go back in, and you resubmit. Meanwhile, you receive condolences from colleagues regarding the fraudulence of your life’s work, but fail to enjoy their tales of other debunked scoundrels, explaining that you do not have much in common with alchemists, astrologers and flat-earthers.

In the re-reviews of your resubmitted comment, reviewer #3 still likes it. Reviewer #2 still hates it and now adds that it should not be published until you obtain the parameters you confessed you were not able, and never would be able, to obtain. Reviewer #1, however, now loves your three-page comment. Incredibly, he has obtained the parameters and confirmed that the authors are wrong, and that you are right. You add a thank you in your comment to reviewer #1 for his heroic efforts.

The editor writes that your comment could perhaps now be published. Unfortunately, it cannot be considered until it is less than 1.00 pages long. You remove all figures, equations, explanations, adjectives and adverbs. You also replace wastefully wide letters, like “m” and “w”, with space-saving letters like “i”, “t” and “l”. “Global warming” thus becomes “global tilting”. The journal responds: “Your comment is 1.09 pages long. Unfortunately, it cannot be considered until it is less than 1.00 pages long.”

You remove all logical arguments and consider kicking off a co-author with a different address, which requires an entire line of valuable space. And you thank your Chinese graduate-student co-author for having a last name only two letters long, and include this important fact in recommendations to her potential employers. You resubmit. Meanwhile, numerous friends remind you that at least you still have your health, albeit in a noticeably deteriorating state since submitting your comment. At a conference, a colleague informs you that he is reviewer #1. You hug him.

You read another three-page comment in the latest issue of the journal. There is also an “erratum” from the authors, in which they admit no errors and instead report new – also wrong – numbers. You yearn for the days when errata involved correcting old errors and not introducing new ones – and realize that, with this “erratum”, the authors have already published their “reply” to your comment.

Adding text debunking the “erratum” lengthens your comment unacceptably, so you shorten it by omitting words like “a”, “an” and “the”, thus giving it exotic foreign feel. And learn that, in some literary circles, sentence fragments acceptable; indeed, verbs highly overrated. Use txt msg shorthand 2 further shorten ur comment, but decide not 2 when 100 frowny-face emoticons u couldnt resist adding actually lengthen it 2 2 pages 🙁 Rsbmt ur cmnt.

A senior editor tells you that you cannot thank reviewer #1 for obtaining the parameters, as it would reveal the journal’s obvious bias in your favour. He adds that you cannot thank reviewer #1 even for confirming your calculations, because there is no record of his having done so. Apparently, the paper on which it was printed has, over the eons, turned to dust. You send reviewer #1’s review to the senior editor, including reviewer #1’s name in case all records of his identity have also been lost.

Over a year after your comment’s submission, you learn from the editor that the authors’ official reply to it was rejected. And because, for maximum reader enjoyment, a comment cannot be published without a reply, your comment cannot be published. This decision is final. Thank you for submitting your comment to the journal with the most rapid publication time in its field.

The full (true!) story is much longer, and has had quite an afterlife on the Internet (see www.physics.gatech.edu/frog). Unfortunately, it could not be considered as a Lateral Thought until it was less than 1.00 pages long.

Author’s note

Rick Trebino

This ridiculous scenario actually occurred pretty much as written. The one exception is that the events described in the last paragraph actually occurred with a different comment, which I submitted to a different journal a few years earlier and which was never published, precisely for the absurd reason given. I also confess that I exaggerated the responses from competitors, colleagues, friends, relatives etc, but not those of the journal editors or the authors. Those events all happened exactly as I have described them.

More than a year after submitting the comment discussed in the rest of this story, I realized that it was clearly doomed unless I took serious action, so I sent a copy of this article to the senior editor’s boss. Shortly afterward, I received a call from the senior editor, who had suddenly withdrawn all of his objections. The comment was fine as it was, and it would be published.

Unfortunately, I was still not allowed to see the authors’ reply until it was actually in print. And when it appeared it reiterated the same erroneous claims and numbers (for the third time!) and then introduced a few new erroneous claims, which, of course, I am not allowed to respond to.

I have withheld the names of the various individuals in this story because my purpose is not to make accusations but instead to effect some social change. Nearly everyone I have encountered who has written a comment has found the system to be heavily biased against well-intentioned correcting of errors – often serious ones – in the archival literature. I find this quite disturbing.

Finally, I should also mention that, to keep this article light and at least somewhat entertaining, I omitted numerous additional steps involving journal website crashes, undelivered e-mails, unreturned phone calls to dysfunctional pagers, complaints to higher levels of journal management and some rather disturbing (and decidedly unfunny) behaviour by the authors and certain editors.

After all, I wouldn’t want to discourage you from submitting a comment.