Best Referee Comments of 2010

[David "Stubb" Oswald]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02394.x/full

This paper is desperate. Please reject it completely and then block the author's email ID so they can't use the online system in future.

It is sad to see so much enthusiasm and effort go into analyzing a dataset that is just not big enough.

The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has nearly sucked the will to live out of me, is the terrible writing style.

The abstract and results read much like a laundry list.

Hopeless – Seems like they have been asleep and are not up on recent work on metagenomics.

[Traveler]

The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.

My favorite.

[Fishler]

A snippet of a longer piece: "You have a disease in your thinking."

[j_j]

I can't repeat some of the review comments I see, since they are confidential, but I have some sympathy with the fellows who make some of these comments.

Then again, it's not always the paper.