Adjudicate the review; do not ingest it

A fluent, specific, line-numbered finding is not a verdict. It is a hypothesis about your work. Modern reviewers — especially models — produce objections that are confidently wrong at a meaningful rate, and some proposed fixes will introduce defects if applied. Your job is to convert findings into evidence-backed decisions.

Rule: never change correct work to satisfy a reviewer you have not checked.

0. First, was the reviewed artifact intact?

Before adjudicating anything, confirm the reviewer saw what you meant to send (see verify-artifact). Findings about missing references, truncated sections, or numbering that does not match your copy are usually artifacts of a bad upload/excerpt, not defects. Adjudicating those as real is how correct material gets broken.

1. Triage before verifying

Classify each finding:

• Type: false statement | proof/logic gap | overclaim (headline exceeds what is established) | scope-or-consistency | exposition | artifact.
• Severity: fatal | major | minor.
• Which question it concerns — and do not let one clear another: reproducibility ≠ implementation fidelity ≠ statistical performance ≠ measurement validity ≠ identification/interpretation.
• Held items: anything that re-litigates a decision the owner already made. Record, do not act.