Is Accepting the Other Side's Argument a Defeat?── When the win-or-lose line is redrawn, review and authoring stand on the same side

Is accepting the other side's argument a defeat? If the reviewer withdraws a point, review has lost; if the author rewrites the wording, authoring has lost — the moment we begin to count it that way, what are we losing sight of? The back-and-forth over a returned draft slides, before we notice, into a question of "which one gives way." Just short of that, I always come to a halt.

01The frame that looks like winning and losing

It starts with one returned draft. The reviewer writes, "isn't this expression saying too much?" The author replies, "no, this is grounded in the source data." The reviewer cites the article — the clause of the rule that must be kept. The author cites the trial's numbers. Over two or three rounds, the temperature of the exchange rises a little at a time. It was supposed to be about the material, but somewhere in the middle it has become, somehow, about "whether my own judgment is right."

Why does this happen? The reason is plain. A returned draft, structurally, ends with "one side fixes it." If the point stands, the author rewrites. If the point disappears, the reviewer withdraws. One moves, the other doesn't. When the only two exits look like that, people read it as "do I bend, or do I bend them." The act of fixing itself starts to feel like admitting defeat.

The problem is that once we begin counting in wins and losses, the standard of judgment quietly gets swapped out. The original question was, "will the image formed in the head of the clinician or patient who reads this material differ from the fact?" But as the contest continues, the question is replaced, before we notice, by "in this one round, will my face be saved?" We argue in the same words, yet the target both of us are watching drifts off, together.

It swaps out this easily, probably, because the positions have names on them. The person who reviews, the person who authors. The instant we sit at the desk wearing the name tag of a role, a point becomes "my opinion," and a rebuttal becomes "a rebuttal of me." The psychologist Leon Festinger wrote that when one's own judgment and an outside denial diverge, a person carries a discomfort — cognitive dissonance, that ill-at-ease feeling of the pieces inside you not fitting — and to dispel it, tries to settle the account not with the other person but inside oneself. Pushing back is, inside oneself, easier than fixing. So before correctness, the feeling of not being able to back down rises up first.

But look closely and something is missing from this frame. At the desk of the returned draft, there is, in truth, one more person. The clinician who receives the material, and beyond them, the patient. While the two of us compete over winning and losing, that third person sits outside the discussion. Who folded is of no concern to them. What reaches them is only the one material that finally went out into the world. What disappears the moment we draw the win-or-lose line is, I think, always this third person's face.

02Is accepting it a loss?

To the rejection email, a long reply comes back. Reading on, I realize that one of my points did not, in fact, properly take the facts into account. The other side's argument is the more correct one. So, what happens here? Something inside the chest grows a little heavier. If I admit this, doesn't it mean I was pushed and lost? Won't I be taken lightly next time — that small hesitation, I know it. Probably the reviewing side and the submitting side both come to a halt at the same place.

If my point goes through, one win; if theirs pushes it back, one loss. Once you start counting that way, the facts go invisible. All that is visible is whether your own argument stands or falls, only that. But think carefully. On that scoreboard, neither the patient nor the clinician appears. While we compete over who won, the thing that matters — whether a misleading material goes out into the world — hangs in the air, unresolved.

To accept the other side's correctness is not a loss. It is a step in which two people, together, drew nearer to the fact. Winning by argument and taking in the other side's correctness look similar but are utterly different. To win by argument is to silence the other and leave your own claim standing. To take it in is to unbind your own claim once, and reassemble it into something more accurate. What remains in the former is "the me who won"; what remains in the latter is "a material with fewer errors." Which was the thing you wanted to protect?

Why accepting it is a step forward becomes clear in negotiation theory. Two researchers, Fisher and Ury, wrote, "focus not on positions but on interests" — the idea that you look not at the win or loss of the claims put on the table, but at what each side truly wants to protect underneath. The reviewer's position is "fix it"; the author's position is "I don't want to fix it." Set positions against each other and there is only winning or losing. But trace the true wish underneath — the interest — and what both want to protect overlaps into one: that information which has not been twisted reaches the person who needs it. Opposed on the level of positions, on the level of interests the two are on the same side.

I want to set one more person here, the philosopher of science Karl Popper. He held that knowledge advances not when correctness is piled up, but when error is found and let go. Having your own theory shown to be wrong — being refuted — is taken not as defeat but as progress. Move this attitude onto the review desk. When your own point is shown to be wrong, can you receive it not with ill humor but as "I managed to reduce one error"? Only the person who can do that draws nearer, in the true sense, to correctness. The power to accept is not weakness. It is another name for the posture of learning from error.

Don't misunderstand. To accept is not to yield to anything and everything. It is, when the other side is right in light of the facts, not to resist for the sake of the position's pride. Conversely, if the other side is not right, you must not accept. To fold there is collusion, not acceptance. Acceptance and compromise differ. Acceptance is following the fact; compromise is following the other side's pressure. The former strengthens the fact, the latter weakens it. The measuring stick is always one — is what I am about to follow the other side's correctness, or my own wish to avoid the conflict?

03The real adversary is not across the desk

Send the rejection email and a reply usually comes. "I understand your point, but I consider this expression to be acceptable." The reviewing side pushes back. The authoring side pushes back. As the exchange runs two rounds, three rounds, the center of the talk shifts, before we notice, from the material itself to "which one folds." Accept it and you lose. Push it through and you win. That air begins to drift, thin, on both sides of the desk.

But pull back and look. The person who truly bears the result of this contest — the stakeholder — is on neither side of the desk. The one who reads that material is neither reviewer nor author. It is the clinician who holds no prior assumption, and the patient who hears the explanation. If a misleading line goes through, the ones who lose are those people, not the two who were fighting over win and loss.

The one that the reviewing side and the authoring side should face is not each other, but a single, shared risk. That a misleading material reaches the hands of a person who holds no assumption to see through it. This is the common enemy. The two who glare at each other across the desk are, in truth, facing the same direction, trying to protect people from the same thing. They just can't see the direction.

This is easy to forget because, once the contest begins, the face of the person in front looms larger than the image of the risk. The other furrows their brow. Their tone sharpens. And then a person mistakes the human rebutting in front of them, rather than the unseen patient far away, for the "enemy." Friction nearby can be touched by hand; harm far off can be touched only by imagination. This gap of distance makes us misplace where the enemy is. The World Health Organization — WHO, the UN's health body — in the ethical criteria for medicinal drug promotion it set out in 1988, placed the measuring stick for judging good and bad in promotion not on the maker's convenience nor on the face of review, but ultimately on "the benefit of the patient." Not who wins. Who is protected. The measuring stick was, from the start, outside the desk.

04Correctness is not won but shared

What makes the win-or-lose frame troublesome is that it turns "correctness" into a possession one side holds. My point is correct. No, my expression is correct. While that is being argued, correctness becomes an object to be fought over. The winner carries correctness home; the loser goes home empty-handed. We come to stand, before we notice, on that premise.

But the correctness of a material is not, I think, the kind of thing that can be made anyone's possession. The state in which a material contains no error cannot be made by the reviewer alone, nor by the author alone. The authoring side writes standing in the receiver's head, the reviewing side fixes the discrepancy, and only where two people's eyes are laid over each other does it first come into being. Correctness is not spoils that pass into the winner's hand; it is a shared thing — something held by everyone — that two people hold up together.

If so, accepting the other side's argument is not a defeat. It is the act of adding one of the other's correctnesses to the shared thing. If the author's argument that "for this reader, this expression conveys it more accurately" is sound, the reviewer who accepts it has not lost. They have thickened the material's correctness by one layer. The reverse — the author accepting the reviewer's point — is the same. It was not taken; it was added. Correctness increases only by addition.

Correctness increases only by addition because wrong information usually arises from one person's blind spot. The authoring side cannot see the premises of their own making. The longer a writer has faced a material, the more they hold the assumption that "this much should get across." That blind spot can be lit only by the eyes of a different position. The reviewing side, too, has a blind spot — the context of the field. Add the two viewpoints, and a discrepancy invisible from one alone surfaces. Fight over correctness and the viewpoints shrink to one. Share it and they grow to two. To erase a blind spot, the only way is to increase, not decrease.

05Crossing over — standing on the same side again

As long as we count in wins and losses, there is a road where both lose together. A material the reviewer pushed through, fixed only in form, with the author unconvinced. A material the author pushed back, passed with a dangerous implication left in. On the desk, either looks as if someone won. But the page, in time, reaches a clinician or patient who holds no assumption. If the fact gets twisted there, the winning side has lost too. The true judge of win and loss is not the other across the desk. It is the person beyond, who receives the material.

The management scholar Mary Parker Follett divided the settling of conflict into three. "Domination," where one side pushes through; "compromise," where each shaves off a little; and "integration," finding a third answer that satisfies both sides' true concerns. In domination, discontent remains with the loser; in compromise, both shave off what they wanted. Follett wrote that conflict itself need not be treated as evil — it can be made the material for a better answer. What review and author fight over is, on the surface, the wording. But the true concern underneath it — to deliver an accurate, useful material — actually overlaps. Find the overlap, and acceptance becomes not defeat but the signal that the two have reached a third answer together.

So, to turn a fight into integration, what can be done in the field? I will set down four measures I feel work.

• Agree first on a shared image of the receiver. Before debating the merit of the wording, put into words, together, "what kind of clinician, with what assumptions, reads this material first?" If you can share the receiver as the same face, the target of the discussion moves from "me and you" to "how it looks to that reader." The instant the target goes outside, the win-or-lose on the desk shrinks.
• Aim the point at the fact, not the person. Not "your writing is sloppy," but "this one sentence leaves room to be read this way." W. Edwards Deming, who built quality management, taught that most problems arising in the field lie not with people but with the system — the flow and premises of the work. Blame the person and they go on the defensive and close their ears. Aim at the fact and the system, and two people can peer into the same problem.
• Keep the distance of a third party, but don't become the enemy. Review goes soft unless it is independent. But independence differs from hostility. Keep the distance and remain, all the while, the other's ally. The stance of "so that your material is not dragged down by a needless wound." Independence and cooperation can stand together.
• Talk at an early stage. A draft returned after it is finished tends toward win and loss. The other has already built it in, and turning back is a loss. Exchange words while it is still unformed, at the wavering stage, and you can fix it while it is no one's work yet. Earliness erases win and loss itself.

For these measures to turn, a foundation is needed. The scholar of organizational behavior Amy Edmondson named, as something common to teams that learn well and fix well, "psychological safety" — the assurance that even a clumsy point or a rebuttal will not bring punishment or ridicule. Without that assurance, the author cannot say "I'm uneasy here," and review cannot show the weakness of "this might be an oversight." Concealment begins on both sides, and the discussion thins into surface win and loss. Conversely, in a team where weakness can be shown to each other, acceptance becomes not surrender but proof of candor.

06The same shore, different posts

At the end of No. 12, I wrote that review and submission may be standing not on opposite banks but on the same shore. Here I want to say what comes next. If they stand on the same shore, the two are not doing separate jobs. They are sharing one job, from different posts.

The guideline on the provision of sales-related information for prescription drugs — the sales-related information provision guideline — that the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare set out in 2018 places, on the side providing information, the responsibility to deliver information that is grounded in evidence, accurate, and not misleading. This responsibility belongs neither to the authoring side alone nor to the reviewing side alone. It rests on everyone, up to the moment the material goes out into the world. The author is the first breakwater, the reviewer the second. The order differs, but the coastline they protect is one.

The win-or-lose frame breaks this breakwater from inside. If the reviewer, "not wanting to lose," stubbornly stops even an expression that could have gone through, information that should reach the field is delayed. If the author, "wanting it through," forces through a line that should have been fixed, wrong information goes out. Seen from the side of the coastline to be protected, either side's wish to win becomes the same hole. A breakwater that has lost sight of whom it protects is just an obstacle.

Either side's wish to win becomes the same hole because the two have, from the start, the same goal. The authoring side's true goal is not to get the material through. It is to help proper use with accurate information. The reviewing side's goal, too, is not to return the draft. Likewise, it is to help proper use. The means are split into "make" and "verify," only that — the destination is one. If the destination is the same, the two are not competitors but fellow travelers carrying the cargo to the same destination by different routes. Being one team — a single team across positions — is not about getting along. It is, I think, about watching over the same destination, each from a different post.

07Closing — redrawing the win-or-lose line

What is happening on both sides of the desk over a single returned draft? The reviewing side braces, "if I miss it, it becomes my responsibility," and the authoring side stiffens, "what I worked this hard on was denied." Both are in earnest. Precisely because they are in earnest, the other comes, before they notice, to look like an enemy. Point goes through, review wins; pushed back, the maker wins — such a scorecard floats, faintly, in everyone's head.

But that scorecard is, probably, measuring the wrong opponent. Review and maker look as if they compete, yet the real opponent is not across the desk. A misleading material reaching a clinician or patient without being noticed for what it is — that single point is what to stand against. To accept the other side's argument is not to lose. It is, with two people's strength, to push that one point back by a millimeter.

The psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote that at the moment a person admits their judgment was a mistake, they feel a strong discomfort — cognitive dissonance — and to avoid it, cling all the more to their original position. The feeling of "fix it and you lose" is not a matter of correctness but a reflex to protect oneself. But what remains beyond holding the position to the end, obeying that reflex, is not a winner. It is only a dangerous line that slipped through everyone's check.

So I want to redraw the line. The win-or-lose line cuts across the middle of the desk. The line of one team — a single team across positions — binds the two onto the same side at the near edge of the desk, and places on the far side "the risk that a misleading material gets through." The scholar of organizational behavior Amy Edmondson says the excellent team is not a fixed troop but a collaboration reassembled each time — teaming, team operation rebuilt case by case. Review and maker may be a two-person team, reassembled with each case.

Acceptance is not submission. It is finding, inside the other's point, an image of the receiver you had overlooked, and taking it into your own judgment. In No. 12, I wrote that review and submission stand not on opposite banks but on the same shore. On that shore, to protect what do you line up? That was this installment's question. So when you are about to be swept up by the reflex of the contest, what should you ask yourself? I will set down four questions I keep in the drawer. They are not the questions of a perfect person. They are a handrail, for me — who braces with "I don't want to lose" in the moment — to come to a halt just short of it.

Chris Argyris, who studied organizational learning, pointed out that people, trying to avoid conflict, fall into "defensive routines" that protect their own premises, and because of it can no longer reach the premise that truly needs fixing. The contest's scorecard is exactly that defensive routine. Only when you stop going for points and the two of you doubt the same premise anew does the material truly get fixed. Acceptance is not defeat. It is the quietest move there is for redrawing the win-or-lose line itself. Believing that, today again I add one line to the rejection email: "Here, let me think it through with you."