Machine learning generalizations

[andycasey]

From the referee:

 "You should not generalize your statements on machine learning, especially 
  because most statements are not correct. You talk about standard machine 
  learning techniques. This is like talking about standard observation 
  techniques, even though we know that there is no standard and every 
  instrument has its specialties. This is the same for machine learning. I 
  would recommend reading "The Elements of Statistical Learning" or "Pattern
  Recognition and Machine Learning" to get a deeper introduction to machine
  learning."

Do any of you know what this vague description is referring to? IMHO all of this is in context of applying The Cannon to stellar spectra. Unless any of you can de-crypt this, I will ignore it and ask for specifics.

@davidwhogg @mkness

[davidwhogg]

I have read one of those books and I stand by my statements! However, I can tone down the sentence or make it more specific (by listing SVM, Random Forest, Deep Learning, k-means, and so on: Every standard machine-learning method!)