I was actually impressed by the referee’s useful suggestion. These days, referee reports, in which colleagues who should be experts review papers before approving them for publication, are often either rubber stamps or vehicles for aggrieved authors looking for citations. This referee’s suggestion actually taught us some physics. The tone had been dismissive, but we learned something from following it up. We had to deal with some misguided criticisms too—but since we had been careful to check papers and experts beforehand, we could readily pinpoint the flaws in those critiques.
