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Retraction seems to have been done without consulting the authors

Posted by KipHansen on 05 Mar 2016 at 18:32 GMT

The lead author, Cai-Hua Xiong of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, explained in the journal <i>Nature</i>: "?Indeed, we are not native speakers of English, and entirely lost the connotations of some words such as ?Creator?. I am so sorry for that.?"

PLOS editors were unable to do what <i>Nature</i> did so easily, contact the authors and ascertain that it is a translation error?

The entire papers could have been corrected with three simple find-and-replace edits: replacing "the Creator" with the word "Nature" -- avoiding all this nonsense about "creationism" and the religious backlash from narrow, blindered minds.

No competing interests declared.

RE: Retraction seems to have been done without consulting the authors

Boötes replied to KipHansen on 05 Mar 2016 at 19:42 GMT

It's not only a translation error. The human hand is not "the proper design" by whom/whatever. For an introduction of the problems see
https://zh.wikipedia.org/...

No competing interests declared.