Have you ever encountered a reviewer who’s more interested in being right than actually understanding the research? I recently came across a Reddit post from someone who’s going through a frustrating experience with a NeurIPS 2025 reviewer. The reviewer seems to be lacking in knowledge about the field, but insists they’re right despite contradicting established references. To make matters worse, they’re raising issues that are out of scope, like claiming that setting ‘gender’ and ‘race’ as debiasing targets is a biased action.
The poster is rightly upset and wants to send a confidential comment to the AC, but is unsure if there’s an official guideline for doing so. It’s understandable, given that we want to ensure that reviewers are held to a certain standard of quality and respect.
This experience highlights the importance of having a clear and respectful communication process in academic conferences. Reviewers should strive to provide constructive feedback that helps the authors improve their work, rather than trying to assert their own opinions. It’s also crucial for conference organizers to have a system in place for addressing issues like this, so that authors can feel confident in the review process.
What do you think? Have you had a similar experience with a reviewer? How did you handle it?