Some journals encourage the submissions of comments to published papers. After all, a little controversy attracts traffic and gives both the critique and the cr

Some journals encourage the submissions of comments to published papers. After all, a little controversy attracts traffic and gives both the critique and the critiqued paper more visibility. But not all authors like being critiqued. This is even worse when competing interests are involved, e.g. patents, or an author is employed at a research-active company that sponsored that paper. This is particularly bad when a paper is accompanied by press releases that dramatically oversell the findings. Unfortunately many researchers seem to read press releases and confuse their content with the actual science reported in the paper. In that case it must be possible to critique a paper and set things right, if only to have a citable record for the next time a reviewer tries to shoot down a paper or grant based on a skewed understanding of prior research.