Your Editorial (Nature 436, 152; 2005) related the story of how Nature had to carry out the painstaking task of rounding up and destroying several thousand copies of last November's supplement "China voices II" containing a map of China without Taiwan, then reprinting it with no map. You assured readers that "whether Taiwan is an independent country ... is not an issue on which Nature takes a stand".
Science recently made a similar clarification — that it has no policy on the Taiwan question — in a published apology by editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy (Science 309, 1677; 2005), following that journal's publication in July of a map of China that included Mongolia but not Hainan and Taiwan.
It is a sad reality that people in some quarters in China might still believe that this omission by two leading science journals represent elements of a concerted move with hidden political motivation, no matter what actions were taken by each journal to claim otherwise.
On the other hand, declaring whether to take a stand on a political issue that has nothing to do with science is a significant political statement in itself, especially when it comes from journals with the stature of Nature and Science.
It is a sad day for science and scientists everywhere when these journals are compelled to explain themselves by making declarations of this kind.
