The Comment by Manheimer (submitted to Nucl. Fusion with this response) on our recent paper Buttery et al (2021 Nucl. Fusion61 046028), has mischaracterized our paper with a series of misleading statements about its content, which it then seeks to refute. It also offers a series of assertions that are unsupported by refereed publication or scientific data—and sometimes in contradiction to the published record and well-established points in the scientific community. In this response we address the main thrusts and themes of the comment, while providing a point-by-point response in the appendix.