Peer reviews and exaggerated politeness

Reading authors’ responses to my own peer reviews is always fascinating.

What interests me most is not whether the paper accepted every suggestion, but whether I actually identified something substantial:

• Did I spot a real conceptual weakness?

• Did my concerns echo those of other reviewers?

• Will the revised manuscript genuinely become better?

The most rewarding moments are not about catching another typo, requesting another control analysis, or pointing out a missing reference. Those things matter, of course. But what I truly value is identifying a deeper misconception — a flawed assumption, an overlooked interpretation, or a conceptual gap that materially changes the work.

When authors explicitly acknowledge that such a comment improved the paper, it is genuinely heartwarming. It feels like the review process achieved its purpose.

That said, there is one ritual of academic reviewing that endlessly puzzles me.

Why does every response begin with:

“We thank the reviewer for this insightful comment…”

Repeated dozens of times.

I have never understood this convention. Why rewrite the same ceremonial sentence again and again? Where did this habit originate? And what kind of social imbalance in academia does it reflect?

Peer review works best, in my view, when it becomes an honest intellectual exchange rather than a performance of exaggerated politeness.