Reviewer 2

The editor's email said "we think you are well placed to assess this manuscript", which is what editors say, and I opened the PDF at my kitchen table on a Sunday and by the end of the abstract I'd put my coffee down. They'd done it. The thing. The experiment I'd proposed in 2021, that had gone to two funders and come back from both with the same polite paragraph about ambition and feasibility. The thing I'd shelved. The thing I'd told my students about as an example of an idea before its time. A group in Zurich had just done it. And, I could see by page four, they'd done it well. I want to be honest about the next twenty minutes because I'm not proud of them. I read the paper looking for something wrong. That's not how you're supposed to read a paper. You're supposed to read it looking for what's true. But I read it like a lawyer, hunting, and every time I thought I'd found a hole they'd already filled it in the supplementary materials, and by the end I was angry at them for being careful. Then I got up and walked round the block. I've been reviewing for fifteen years. I've had my own work reviewed by people who I'm fairly sure had exactly this reaction, and I've received reports that were two pages of someone's wounded pride dressed up as methodological concern, and I know precisely what it feels like to be on the other end of that. I know what it costs. Six months, a year, a student's funding running out while a reviewer nurses a grudge. I came back and started again from the abstract. It was a good paper. It was a very good paper. The design was cleaner than mine had been, they'd controlled for a thing I hadn't thought of, and their sample was twice the size I'd proposed, which was probably why their funder had said yes and mine had said "ambitious". There was one real issue, a statistical choice in section 3.2 that I thought was defensible but under-argued, and one figure that needed a better legend, and that was it.

I wrote the review. Two pages. I said it was a significant contribution. I raised the 3.2 point and suggested how they might address it. I asked for the legend. I recommended minor revisions. Then I did the thing I'd been avoiding, which was to check whether I ought to declare anything. The conflict of interest form asks about financial ties, about collaborations, about personal relationships. It does not have a box for "I had this idea first and nobody would pay for it". I wrote to the editor anyway. I said: I want you to know that I proposed a closely related study some years ago and it was not funded. I don't believe this affects my assessment but you should know, and if you'd prefer to seek an additional reviewer I understand. She wrote back within the day. "Thank you for telling me. I've read your report. I'm going to use it." The paper came out in the spring. I've cited it twice. The first author is a postdoc I've never met, and at a conference in the autumn she gave a talk on it, and I sat in the third row and listened to her describe the thing I'd wanted to do, and she was good, and it was hers. Afterwards I introduced myself. I said I'd enjoyed the talk. I did not say anything else. She said, "Oh! I think you might have reviewed us. The 3.2 comment. That was a really useful comment, we redid the whole analysis." I said I couldn't possibly confirm that. She laughed. We got a coffee. I still have the proposal. It's in a folder called "someday". I opened it last week and read it and it's fine, it's a fine proposal, and it's four years old, and someone did it better, and I'm going to leave it there.