James Randerson scrapes a little more info on the Han and Warda paper. The editor, Michael Dunn, sounds uncommunicative, but I can’t blame him for wanting to proceed cautiously…I just hope that eventually we get a better accounting.

The interesting revelation is a letter from one of the authors, Warda. I think we’ve found the source of the weird fantasies in the text.

The problem is that we described in very clear and definite way the disciplined nature that takes part inside our cells. We supported our meaning with define proteomics evidences that cry in front of scientists that the mitochondria is not evolved from other prokaryotes. They want to destroy us because we say the truth; only the truth.

Yes, the paper does describe the complexity in mitochondria. However, the paper does not back up their claim to have “disproven” the endosymbiotic hypothesis for the origin of mitochondria at all, nor does it provide any evidence for an alternative…and postulating a “mighty creator” is not a scientific alternative hypothesis. Complexity is not an argument against evolution!

Nobody was interested in destroying them. They wrote some foolish things in a science paper that were completely unwarranted, and people are discussing the sloppy and inappropriate content. There is no fatwa here.

He also denies plagiarizing anything. Sorry, guy, the evidence is there, and stonewalling is not a credible option right now. It just makes me want to reject everything you say, since the smoking gun is right there in your hand, where everyone can see it.

Mr Warda revealed his agenda yet further in comments to the the Times Higher Education supplement:

Co-author Mr Warda told Times Higher Education that to criticise Western science was “taboo”. He said: “It is clear that the fingerprint of (the) mighty creator (is) inside everyone in this Universe.”

After initially claiming that evolution was a “useless, evidence-less” theory, he said the process did take place, but under the control of “complete, disciplined wisdom” and not in a chaotic way. “Even one amino acid, when mutated in any of millions of tiny different cell receptors in their body, can kill or ruin life,” he added. “Is this chaos?”

So I think we can now safely say how the goofiness got into the paper: one of the authors simply and unashamedly put it there. Now the puzzle is to figure out how such blatant garbage got past peer review.