The responsibility of referees and editors

Eugen G Tarnow  January 5 2011 12:34:43 PM

I recently had a referee reject a paper of mine stating "Most of the relations that the author reports in the manuscript are not new (relations between response latency and probability of error, number of items recalled and the error frequency, recall order and error rate)."

The referee did not state any supporting references.

What should the responsibility of the editor be in this situation?  Should he/she not ask for supporting references?  Should referees be allowed to issue judgements arbitrarily when they are protected by anonymity?  Is that not inappropriate?

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