WIKIMEDIA, D SHARON PRUITTSocial media lit up last week when readers noticed that a January PLOS ONE paper entitled “Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living,” made several references to a “Creator.” PLOS responded rapidly, retracting the paper on Thursday (March 3).
On Wednesday (March 2), Twitter users began referring to the article as the #handofgod paper, some calling on PLOS to correct or retract the study. A couple of weeks before that, a contentious conversation played out in the Reader Comments section of the paper, with critics querying the authors—which included a trio of researchers from Chinese universities and research institutes—about their use of the seemingly creationist language.
On February 15, commenter “JasonFriedman” wrote: “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.” He then directly challenged the paper’s authors. “I am interested to hear from the authors why one ...
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