The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Is there ever a point to replying to referee feedback (on a rejection) when it is mistaken? To be clear, I have no interest in questioning the rejection with the journal/editor and am submitting the manuscript elsewhere.

Briefly: had a paper rejected for a combination of reasons, one of which the editor mentioned basing the decision on specifically and which was IMO not accurate. Specifically, the referee indicated I should have consulted and used a particular example from an author's other work rather than the example I did use, when these examples are identical. The same referee also indicated that I don't engage with well-known theory X, which would be a great point except that (1) that theory and area is not germane to the topic of my paper and (2) the architect of theory X is very clear in print that the topic of my paper would not 'apply' to the theory. The comments were not particularly detailed, although two of the same referee's other comments were somewhat helpful for revision.

Is this sort of thing just par for the course?

Good question! I don't think there's any point in responding in a case like this. As another reader put it in a submitted response comment:

I would just drop it, and move on. Neither the referee nor the editor want to continue in such a discussion. The only reason to pursue it, is if you are contesting the decision of the editor. But this is most often futile. (I did successfully push back on an editor once, who rejected an R&R … the paper has now been cited over 200 times).

Peer-review is what it is, and there will always be mistakes in the process. Way back in the day when papers were sent to journals by snail mail, my graduate advisor said he always had an addressed envelope with the next journal he would send the paper to after a rejection–and that unless the reviewers from the previous journal had really good points that needed addressing, he would just send it to the next journal without any revisions. This has always seemed to me like sensible advice. As Richard Yetter Chappell notes here, there are always objections that can be raised to just about any argument, so if you keep addressing every objection reviewers have, your paper will just grow continually longer and more unwieldy. 

So, these are my thoughts: don't waste time responding to "mistaken" referees. Instead, give referee reports a read, decide for yourself whether any revisions are necessary before submitting to a new journal, and go from there! I guess I'll just add one thing, which is that if more than one reviewer makes the same "mistake", maybe you should preemptively address it so that they future reviewers won't make the same one.

What do you all think?