who's asking you to do this? the editors? as for what it means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... – but that wouldn't be a positive thing to put in a paper. I don't know what your findings are, but perhaps you can argue "you only find what your method of detection could possibly find" like in the different methods of looking for protein complexes http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi... - Michael Kuhn

Yes, it's the editors and the paper is a straightforward summary of prevalence of a Chlamydia trachomatis variant (nvC trachomatis). We were only looking for nvC and we found nvC. Finding specifically what we are looking for is kind of a cornerstone in diagnostics (specificity) as opposed to basic research, where you might want to find anything and everything. Nevertheless, like you say Michael ""you only find what your method of detection could possibly find", and putting that into the paper makes no sense to me. - Nils Reinton

how about this pattern: "There are other mechanisms to cause X, for example, A, B, and C [REF]. However, our findings explain XX% of all cases and thus show that Y is an important mechanism in the etiology of X." - Michael Kuhn

That would be ok if there were other "mechanisms to cause X", but here "X" is the presence of this bacteria. Our method is not in dispute, nor is the quality of that method, presumably then, it's agreed upon that our method explains 100% of the cases, and I still do not understand what the editors want from us. I would if this was a question of the specificity or sensitivity of the method, but even then the statement would make little sense to me. - Nils Reinton

Nils, remember that reviewers comments, even editors, don't have to make sense. It sounds to me like they're trying to suggest that they wanted some discussion of sensitivity and specificity, so put that in there and say something like "Detection of other analytes, while of significant diagnostic utility, is beyond the scope of this method." - Mr. Gunn

Mr Gunn FTW. I will just add that I have found some editors to be very responsive to questions like "what the fuck do you mean by this?" -- it might save you some time to ask them directly for a clarification. (Also that I am not in favour of jumping through meaningless hoops to satisfy an editor who *won't* give a reason for his/her requests. There are plenty of journals out there.) - Bill Hooker

Thank you all for valuable advice. I will end up doing a combination of all of the above. I already sent an e-mail reply to ask for clarification, but have also started working in changes such as those suggested by Michael and Mr. dr. Gunn. This is for a national journal which was chosen to reach our clients as effectively as possible, - and it's open access :-) Collaborative studies on this subject will be published in international journals this time hopefully with *constructive* criticism from reviewers and editors. - Nils Reinton

So after trying to work in something sensible into the manuscript, in frustration I ended up adding the following to two different sentences (one in the conclusions section and one in the discussion section): "..... emphasizing the point "you only find what you look for"". And....now the paper is approved. Not sure if I am sad or happy about this. - Nils Reinton

Frustrating indeed. I recently abandoned a submission (only a letter to the editor) rather than jump through any more hoops. This is, unfortunately, not an option for anyone still in academia or anywhere else that papers are currency. - Bill Hooker