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Scientific journals have a long tradition of publishing formal comment-and-replies (or sometimes called discussion-and-reply) in which one group of researchers address a recently published paper and the authors of that paper have a chance to respond.

This example from a 1963 paper about sediment accumulation rates from The Journal of Geology is a bit different.

In this case, it seems those writing the formal comment didn’t take issue with the results or even the implications of the work. They merely wished to point out a minor error in presentation. Here’s the key passage from their comment:

It is obvious that this error in presenting sedimentation rates has no effect whatever on the ages given in the paper. Therefore, the main body of the paper and the conclusions reached by Rosholt et al. require no modification.

To which the authors reply:

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What do they mean nobody is perfect? They must not have met you Scott.......

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i don't get it.