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How to (unfairly) criticize almost any paper

Feb 12, 2023

A paper that receives negative reviews may not be as bad as the reviewers claim. Below, I summarize some general criticisms I've seen in the past and discuss why they don't make sense.

Criticism category 1: I disagree with your values.

• Criticism: The paper addresses problem X but does not solve it perfectly. Until it becomes perfect, it is useless.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. It may be a good foundation for future work. Also, many techniques are used in ways that differ from their original intention. Just because a technique seems useless now does not mean it will remain useless forever.


• Criticism: The paper addresses problem X but ignores problem Y. This paper is pointless unless the authors show that X is more important than Y.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. Many papers address problem Y without showing that Y is more important than, say, climate change.

Criticism category 2: I disagree with your motivation.

• Criticism: The paper addresses problem X, but no other papers address problem X. Because no one else cares about X, it cannot be important.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. Academia should be open to transformative research.


• Criticism: The paper addresses problem X, but another paper also addresses problem X. Because X has been addressed by prior work, this paper is too incremental.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. Many papers improve over prior work and push the knowledge boundaries.

Criticism category 3: I disagree with your technique.

• Criticism: The technique is too simple. Even though it solves a problem for the first time, it is trivial.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. The fact that the technique solves the problem for the first time makes it a nontrivial contribution.


• Criticism: The technique is too complicated. Even though it solves a problem for the first time, it is merely engineering.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. The fact that the technique solves the problem for the first time makes it a meaningful contribution.

Criticism category 4: I just don't understand.

• Criticism: The paper is too short. It's two pages under the page limit.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. As long as the paper makes substantial contributions and present them clearly, there's no need to fill in extra pages.


• Criticism: The paper is too long. With so much information in the supplementary material, this paper should not publish at a conference with a short page limit.
  Response: Not a valid reason to reject the paper. I am speechless about this one.

Acknowledgment

My opinions above were heavily influenced by my PhD advisor. However, as I was the sole author of this blog post, all errors are mine.