I missed this entirely until reading an article where an ID supporter offered this as an example of anti-religious discrimination in academia. Here’s a Washington Post article which gives a good summary of the events:
In short: a paper was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE titled Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living. The abstract and paper contain several references to “the Creator”, such as the following:
The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way. The clear link between the structure and the function of the human hand also suggests that the design of a multifunctional robotic hand should be able to better imitate such basic architecture.
The paper appears to have nothing to do with pro-ID or pro-creationism arguments. Still, the references to “the Creator” appear rather haphazard and scientifically unmotivated. These references produced alarm among many readers, which eventually resulted in the retraction of the paper. What intrigued me was a clarification by Ming-Jin Liu, one of the four Chinese authors of the paper:
Some questions I’d be interested for people to discuss.
- Do you think the whole incident shows anti-religion bias in science, as ID advocates allege?
- Do you think the retraction of the paper was an overreaction?
My personal take
Regarding the first question: as @swamidass has argued, in science today the rules are such that you cannot talk about God as you would in a theology article. This reflects the role of methodological naturalism (MN), where science can only restrict itself to testable phenomena, which I agree with. However, it is interesting that even today we still sometimes refer to “Nature” in the abstract when talking about science, especially in conversational contexts (e.g. “We are fortunate that Nature has given us the thorium monoxide molecule, which allows to measure the electron electric dipole moment with unprecedented sensitivity.”). I suspect that this is connected to how physicists writing for a popular audience have slipped into “God” language even though they don’t really mean to advance religious ideas in the conventional sense. See Einstein (“God does not play dice”), Hawking (“the mind of God”), Paul Davies, etc.
To me as a Christian physicist, “Nature” and “the Creator” are more or less synonymous, for I don’t think MN conflicts with God’s role as Creator and sustainer of Nature. Still, I can understand that in the American context, “the Creator” has additional religious connotations that make it inappropriate for a science journal article.
On the other hand, it could be that in biology-related fields, even references to “nature” are considered forbidden. It would be interesting for the biologists here to chime in on whether even references to “nature” are frowned upon.
Regarding question two: If we accept the explanation by Liu, then it seems to me that the proper response be to rewrite the article and replacing the references to “the Creator” by “nature” or “evolution”, or taking them out entirely. To me, the whole incident seems to be an instance of a cultural miscommunication. The Chinese authors apparently had little awareness of the sensitive nature of debates about creationism and design in the US, and was unaware of the connotation of the word “the Creator”. However, the readers in the US were too quick to jump to the worst possible conclusion, assuming their cultural context is what matters (“this is a paper by ID/creationist advocates trying to sneak design into science!”). It seems that the editors were simply acting out of fear of many people who had threatened to unsubscribe from the journal if they didn’t retract it.
Ultimately, I think the retraction was an overreaction. If the scientific content paper was of sub-standard scientific quality for even an open-access journal like PLOS ONE, then it should be retracted. But none of the quoted statements by outraged readers referenced any flaws in the scientific content itself, other than the references to “the Creator”, which could have been fixed easily.