Annotated Rebuttals: Concession and Defence as Responses to a Single Reviewer Objection

This worked example considers one representative reviewer objection, a request to justify the decision not to adjust for a particular confounder in the analysis, and presents two well-constructed responses: one that concedes and adds the requested analysis, and one that defends the original approach. The reasoning behind each choice is annotated in the margin.

The original reviewer comment

Illustrative reviewer comment: "The authors should justify why age was not included as a covariate in the adjusted model, given its known association with the outcome in prior literature."

First response: concession

"We thank the reviewer for this observation. We have re-run the adjusted model including age as a covariate (Table 3, revised); the effect estimate for the primary exposure changed minimally (from X to Y), and we have updated the Results (p. 8) and Discussion (p. 11) accordingly." Margin note: this response concedes cleanly; the change is made and located specifically, and its practical impact on the result is stated directly rather than left for the reader to infer.

Second response: defence

"We appreciate the reviewer's point. Age was not included as a covariate because our directed acyclic graph (Supplementary Figure 2) identifies it as a potential mediator rather than a confounder for this specific exposure-outcome pathway, consistent with [cited methodological source]; adjusting for a mediator would risk introducing bias rather than removing it. We have added this reasoning to the Methods (p. 6, revised)." Margin note: this defends with a specific, citable methodological reason — not a bare assertion that age "isn't relevant" — and still adds something to the manuscript (the stated reasoning) even while declining the requested change.

Selection of the appropriate response

The right choice depends on the actual methodological situation, not on which response "looks stronger": if the reviewer's point is genuinely well-founded, conceding cleanly (version one) is usually the more credible path; if there's a specific, defensible methodological reason the suggested change would be wrong (as in version two), defending with that specific reason — not a vague objection — is appropriate.

Key points

Practical application

Frequently asked questions

@misc{annotated_rebuttals_example_2026,
  author       = {{Pubrica Academy}},
  title        = {Annotated Rebuttals: Concession and Defence as Responses to a Single Reviewer Objection},
  howpublished = {Pubrica},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {oct},
  url          = {https://pubrica.com/academy/examples/annotated-rebuttals-example/},
  note         = {Accessed: <span data-cite-acc="iso">2026-10-15</span>}
}

Comment: ___
Is the point methodologically well-founded? ___
If conceding: what changed, where (specific location), and what was the practical impact?
If defending: what is the specific, citable methodological reason?