Turns out that as a complement to a paper on the treatment of malaria in Cambodia, June 2015 edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases had a cover depicting the Cambodian Buddha contemplating a mosquito:
The journal got tons of complaints for using the depiction of the statue in a non-religious context. (In fact, some raving dude accused them of having no sense or sensibility and, to top it, he said they were doing the same as Charlie Hebdo — making it sound like it’s a bad thing! That ought to be a badge of honor!).
So The Lancet cowards bowed to pressure and issued such a lame excuse, it’d have been better if they’d just kept silent:
At the time of publication, we were not aware of any proscription against picturing statues of the Buddha. However, given the complaints received, the illustration was taken down from the journal’s website on May 22.
The new cover is as exciting as listening to a chess match on the radio:
This is not just a bad sign for free speech, but it is a bad precedent for science — what will The Lancet do when very picky churchgoers choose to be offended with the conclusions of one of their papers? Judging by this bad decision, those will also be removed, lest they offend the illiterate.
(via Why Evolution Is True)
