Most of the revisions that reviewers suggest are very reasonable, well-thought, and sometimes really improve the manuscript. Other times the reviews can be extraordinarily unpleasent. Here is a list of odd and harsh quotes the reviewrs/editors have made on my manuscripts or proposals.
Ever heard of this rule about the reference list?
"After examining the manuscript, I feel that this manuscript is more appropriate for J. Climate. For one thing, the research topic fits much better with J. Climate, as evidenced by the journals in the reference list (several J. Climate, Climate Dynamics, but no J. Atmos. Sci.)."
Someone really wants to be a co-author on this paper or co-PI on my proposal
"In this reviewer's opinion, a revised manuscript would benefit from the presence of additional authors representing key players from the SP-CAM team who are most familiar with that model and why it behaves the way it does and could suggest analyses that might reveal reasons for the differences presented. They might also assist the authors in bringing the English up to required standards and fixing the typos and sloppy formatting in the manuscript as it currently exists."
"The PI has extensive experience in the research of atmospheric convection and cloud-resolving models but does not appear to have done much ENSO research in the past. I do not intend to discourage the PI to expand the research expertise but it may be beneficial to collaborate with someone who specializes in ENSO dynamic to study MJO-ENSO interactions."
I don't know what I'm doing but I'm very good at doing it
"I'm not familiar with the details of MSSA, but this looks like spectral ringing to me."
"...and this may be due to my lack of experience with the topic, why does a wide power spectra in Fig. 1 imply "nonlinear oscillations"?
"How are the pentads defined? What I mean is that predicting t=1 suggests that the first day of the future pentad might actually be one day from the last day of the "current" pentad. In prediction studies, this is not optimal as it means you are using today's information to predict part of tomorrow (but calling it a pentad away). More discussion on this is needed."
"I am also not in the position to comment on the physical interpretation of many of the results, but they seem reasonable"