Reply to STOTEN 802 (2022) 149713: The fallacy in the use of the "best-fit" solution in hydrologic modeling

In this reply we respond to the short discussion contribution by Abbaspour (2022) in which a fallacy in the use of "best-fit" model solutions to be employed in hydrologic modeling studies is illustrated. Abbaspour (2022) advised to perform stochastic model calibration and proposed to employ the R- and P-Factor statistics for a model evaluation together with suggested thresholds for a model to be acceptable. In a minimal working example we followed the proposed stochastic approach for model evaluation and show that the proposed R- and P-Factor metrics and their thresholds accept implausible model ensemble simulations which would have been rejected in an individual assessment with the NSE metric. In this way, we want to raise the caution to rely on single performance metrics for model evaluation and the use of globally defined thresholds to define model acceptance.