In reply:
We thank Mr Chatburn for reading our paper with such meticulous and extensive attention to detail as to find and point out what seem to be inconsequential mistakes. These oversights were not unintentional distortions or corrupted information, but perhaps just minor errors overlooked during the review and editing process.
Chatburn is correct in that the equation on page 1149 and in Figure 7: should have been written as a proportional relationship using the “proportional to” symbol (∝), as stated in the sentence that followed:
If V̇CO2 increases without a proportional rise in V̇A, CO2 production exceeds CO2 excretion and PaCO2 increases.
It was never our intension for readers to apply this equation into clinical practice, but simply to express and illustrate the concept of the proportional relationship between PaCO2, CO2 production, and alveolar ventilation.
The precise units in a figure or the position of a dot or a bar above a character are minor if not trivial details that most people interested in learning and understanding basic concepts would normally ignore. Chatburn's approach to these inaccuracies from the perspective of a research scientist or engineer in the process of analyzing, simulating, and understanding precise data calculations are valid points for all authors, reviewers, and editors to consider.
We thank Mr Chatburn for his compulsion for accuracy and obsession to detail in pointing out these slight but important transgressions.
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