Flaw

Of course the opinion of our chairman does not only apply to medical research, but probably all aspects of our life.

To go one step further, many of you may know my motto is Nothing flawless is natural or genuine (an insightful comment by Philo Vance, the legendary detective under S.S. van Dine). In other words, when serving as a reviewer, I am always eager to find out the problem of a paper - the more perfectly appeared a manuscript, the harder I search.

Alas, this is not a habit of mine alone. Most reviewers do the same, albeit often subconsciously. As an author, my usual strategy is to leave a simple obvious problem (for which the answer I prepared well in advance) in the manuscript I submit - so that the reviewer could point out (and feel satisfied, so that they would hopefully forget about other problems that I could not answer) and I could make a sensible response. Bingo !

PS. The same phenomenon actually happens in clinical examination. Examiners generally search for some loopholes in the candidates answer. A sophisticated student often leaves a point or two unclear in the answer, so that the examiners would dig deeper - only to find that the student actually knows a lot more.