[D] Dealing with an unprofessional reviewer using fake references and personal attacks in ICML26
Our take
We are currently facing an ICML 2026 reviewer who lowered the score to a 1 (Confidence 5) while ignoring our rebuttal and relying on fake references and personal insults like "close-minded" and "hostile." Despite my other reviewers giving 5s, this individual is using mathematically nonsensical proofs and making baseless accusations about MIT license/anonymity violations, all while using aggressive formatting and strange syntax errors (e.g., bolding ending with periods like **.). The reviewer is also constantly editing their "PS" section to bait Program Chair attention and bias the discussion phase. I’ve never seen such unprofessionalism in peer review; has anyone successfully had a review discarded or flagged for AC intervention when a reviewer uses demonstrably fraudulent citations and resorts to ad hominem attacks?
Note: we got other two as 5 but one is shaking with partially resolved. We are pretty sure I respond each weakness with professional and respectful words in the first rebuttal but in the second, we pointed out the reviewer no relevant references and circular reasoning. He/she seems outrageous… I mean if he/she doesn’t agree we can battle with professionalism but the reviewer is basically living in his / her own mind.
[link] [comments]
Read on the original site
Open the publisher's page for the full experience
Related Articles
- So Confused about Polarizing ICML Reviews [D]Hi, rebuttals recently finished, and I wanted to share my paper's scores to ask for thoughts on this, and whether this situation is borderline and dependent on the AC. My paper started out as 5 (4), 4 (4), 4 (3), 2 (4). After the rebuttals, I ended up at 5 (4), 5 (4), 5 (3), 2 (5). This makes the average 4.25, with a confidence average of 4. The two 4 reviewers both increased their ratings to 5 and wrote nice Final Justifications (one said they were confident the final version would be a strong submission, the other said all their concerns were resolved). However, the 2 reviewer hated the paper from the start. While some critiques were valid, others were asking for a different paper. I still responded cleanly to them, and their response was even more aggressive. I responded once again, and as expected, they did not change their score and just increased the confidence. They also dropped originality to 1 (all other fields were at 2). Every other reviewer gave us a 4 for originality!! This is my first time submitting to ICML, so I'm wondering how cases like this play out - is one confident negative reviewer enough to sink the ship? Or is it largely a coin flip? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated! submitted by /u/Actual_Creme9905 [link] [comments]
- Seems ICML is rejecting MANY unanimous positively rated papers [D]My 4444 (4443 pre-rebuttal) got rejected (as expected). Just copying a reply I wrote a couple of days ago before decisions were out: There seems to be a misalignment in the incentives of this year’s ICML reviews. The rebuttal phase is pushing hard to encourage reviewers to reconsider their scores, which has a good motivation. But in practice, it creates a distorted dynamic. ACs are seeking homogeneous ratings among reviewers. As a reviewer, I feel the pressure to increase my score to avoid prolonged back-and-forth discussions. I would assume there may be many reviewers who are not engaged but raise their scores just to end the discussion. At the same time, reviewers who are initially positive often seem reluctant to update their scores, even after their concerns are addressed. I came across a review that said: “Thank you for the rebuttal. The paper is valuable. The rebuttal addressed all my concerns.” (rephrased to avoid directly locating the paper) Yet the score remained at 4. It now makes me nervous (NOW I KNOW I WAS RIGHT!) since scores are inflated while the conference has a limited capacity. In a few days, we may see MANY uniformly positively rated papers rejected, just like last NeurIPS. I would prefer to roll back to how peer review originally was: reviewers provide honest and independent evaluations; AC assess their quality and consistency; and borderline cases are resolved through AC discussion. The current mechanism feels unnecessarily complex and makes the already bad situation worse. submitted by /u/AffectionateLife5693 [link] [comments]
- [ICML 2026] Extending the deadline for reviewer final justifications while not extending for Author-AC comments was a huge mistake [D]Just as the title says, I believe the decision to extend the deadline for reviewers to post their final justifications while not allowing authors to contact their ACs was a big misstep. I have a reviewer who, in their final justification is questioning the reliability of experimental setup and evaluation, as was as the fairness of comparison, issues that were never brought up during the initial review or their response to our rebuttal. It seems as though they were looking for reasons to justify not wanting to move their score from weak accept. It now feels like, despite having otherwise strong reviews that are leaning accept, this review might tank the paper. submitted by /u/undesirable_12 [link] [comments]
- Getting sabotaged by a reviewer at IJCAI [D]Recently got the reviews back from ijcai, now all is good except for this one reviewer who has not read the paper in depth, and is making false statements in the review. This reviewer is saying that some stuff is not explored which is clearly shown in the paper. They are also angry that we did not cite a particular work, and suggests us to do extra experiments on that work (which is against ijcai policy) What should we do, he is clearly sabotaging us, do we reach out to PC via chairing tool? Do PC respond to query like this? Do we include extra experiments in the rebuttal? submitted by /u/AppropriatePush6262 [link] [comments]