Receiving Critical Review

Use this when someone hands you reviewer feedback on your analysis or paper and you're about to start making changes. It's built around a verify-first pattern: restate the concern, check it against your actual data and pre-registration, then decide if the suggestion is correct for your setup. The part about pre-registration guard is solid: it catches when a well-meaning "improve this" comment would silently convert your confirmatory analysis into an exploratory one. Also enforces pushing back with technical reasoning when feedback would introduce bias, like conditioning on a collider. The forbidden responses section bans performative agreement phrases, which honestly needed saying.

GitHub stars: 202
last updated: Jun 1, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add k-dense-ai/science-superpowers --skill receiving-critical-review --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Receiving Critical Review

Overview

Critique of an analysis requires technical evaluation, not emotional performance.

Core principle: Verify before changing. Ask before assuming. Methodological correctness over social comfort.

A reviewer pointing at a confound is doing you a favor only if you check whether the confound is real. Reflexively agreeing — or reflexively defending — both skip the verification that makes review worthwhile.

The Response Pattern

WHEN receiving review feedback:

1. READ: The complete feedback without reacting
2. UNDERSTAND: Restate the methodological concern in your own words (or ask)
3. VERIFY: Check it against the data, code, and pre-registration
4. EVALUATE: Is it correct FOR THIS analysis?
5. RESPOND: Technical acknowledgment or reasoned pushback
6. ACT: One item at a time, re-running and re-verifying each