RETRACTED ARTICLE: Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history
Authors: Pieter François
Alan Covey
Thomas E Currie
Jennifer Larson
Robert M Ross
John Baines
Rosalind Purcell
Enrico Cioni
Barend Ter Haar
Harvey Whitehouse
Peter Turchin
Kevin C Feeney
Patrick E Savage
Journal: Nature (2019)
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
Keywords: religion; complex societies; moralizing gods; supernatural agents; cooperation
Affiliations: Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK., St Benet's Hall, Oxford, UK., Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. ., Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Japan. ., Human Behaviour & Cultural Evolution Group, Department of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK., School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland., Seshat: Global History Databank, Evolution Institute, San Antonio, FL, USA., ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders and Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK., Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK., Department of Modern & Classical Language Studies, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA., Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK., Department of Chinese Language and Culture, Asia-Africa-Institute, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany., Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA., Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Wien, Austria.

Abstract:  The origins of religion and of complex societies represent evolutionary puzzles1-8. The 'moralizing gods' hypothesis offers a solution to both puzzles by proposing that belief in morally concerned supernatural agents culturally evolved to facilitate cooperation among strangers in large-scale societies9-13. Although previous research has suggested an association between the presence of moralizing gods and social complexity3,6,7,9-18, the relationship between the two is disputed9-13,19-24, and attempts to establish causality have been hampered by limitations in the availability of detailed global longitudinal data. To overcome these limitations, here we systematically coded records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world, using 51 measures of social complexity and 4 measures of supernatural enforcement of morality. Our analyses not only confirm the association between moralizing gods and social complexity, but also reveal that moralizing gods follow-rather than precede-large increases in social complexity. Contrary to previous predictions9,12,16,18, powerful moralizing 'big gods' and prosocial supernatural punishment tend to appear only after the emergence of 'megasocieties' with populations of more than around one million people. Moralizing gods are not a prerequisite for the evolution of social complexity, but they may help to sustain and expand complex multi-ethnic empires after they have become established. By contrast, rituals that facilitate the standardization of religious traditions across large populations25,26 generally precede the appearance of moralizing gods. This suggests that ritual practices were more important than the particular content of religious belief to the initial rise of social complexity. 

Retracted: Yes

PubPeer comments:
 Is there a particular reason why several passages of this review are very similar to this one: 10.3390 ma12121991 published in 2019? Same concepts are described, same arguments and same citations. , 
 #1 It is possible that the person who commented does not understand the difference between a review and an original work in the form of a published paper. When reviewing a subtopic, it is not unlikely that same technical words will appear in every review. As you can see from the following, there is no u201ccopyingu201d of the cited review. If both of us are reviewing the same literature, how can the references cited be different! We have also credited the earlier review in that paragraph as an important earlier review. Cited paper (Ref. 98 of Mol Pharm paper): In fact, Peng and co-workers developed Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate (PHBHHx) NPs with a bovine serum albumin (BSA) corona. They found that the pre-formed corona reduced the subsequent adsorption of IgG and the complement fragment C4b on the NPu2013BSA surface, ultimately resulting in lower opsonization after serum exposure in rats. The pre-formed BSA corona behaved as a protective coating in vivo, reducing the clearance speed and extending the NP circulation time [21]. Conversely, it has been shown that albumin pre-coated NP interactions often depend on the chosen experimental model. Nguyen and colleagues demonstrated cell-specific differences in the uptake of gelatin-oleic NPs with an albumin pre-coating. In this case, the administration of BSA coronau2013NP complexes resulted in decreased A549 cell uptake with or without fetal bovine serum (FBS) in the medium. In contrast, a strong increase in cellular uptake by HEK 293 cells has been observed [22]. One of the first examples was the use of polysorbate-80 (also known as Tween 80), a non-ionic surfactant derived from polyethoxylated sorbitan and oleic acid. A polysorbate-80 NP shell promotes the adsorption of apolipoprotein subsets (mainly ApoE) that allow for the transport of surfactant-coated NPs across the bloodu2013brain barrier (BBB) to bind the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor [23u201325]. Brain targeting through the same mechanism has been also shown for Polybutyl cyanoacrylate (PBC) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) NPs covered by polysorbate [26u201328]. Likewise, other surfactants (e.g., poloxamer) have been used to transport the antitumor drug doxorubicin across the BBB [29,30]. Apolipoproteinsu2019 role as specific targeting molecules was also investigated by Kim and collaborators. This study showed that poly(ethylene glycol) poly-hexadecylcyanoacrylate (PEG-PHDCA) NPs preferentially absorbed rat ApoE and ApoB-100 on their surface and were effectively taken up by rat brain endothelial cells using the LDL receptor on the BBB [31]. However, a major problem regarding the off-targets of these delivery strategies must be considered. Indeed, in addition to the brain, LDL receptors are expressed on liver hepatocytes [32], leading to possible toxic outcomes and challenging the specificity of the target tissue. Mol Pharm 2020 paper: Engineering corona composition for drug targeting: The composition of corona can be tailored to target drugs in principle. There are enough promising results for this approach. While early belief was that hydrophilicity of PEG on nanoparticles reduces protein adsorption, at least in the cases of PEGylated nanoparticles of polystyrene, silver and silica (97); it has now been shown that selective binding of clusterin (from plasma) reduces opsonisation by Ig and CD47 (98). This, in turn, reduces the uptake of the particles by phagocytes, resulting in increased circulation half-lives in blood. Some results obtained so far in drug targeting via manipulation of corona composition are summarized below (98). Precoating of polystyrene nanoparticles was found to reduce corona formation by blood proteins, decreasing their uptake by hepatic cells. Precoating of poly-3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate nanoparticles with BSA reduced their opsonisation of Ig and C4b in rats. Surprisingly, precoating of gelatin-oleic acid nanoparticles by BSA decreased their uptake by A549 but not HEK293 cells (99), pointing out that a lot more needs to be done to understand how one can be sure of the desired result. Blood brain barrier (BBB) has always been a challenge in drug discovery programs. It was found that precoating polymethyl methacrylate nanoparticles by Tween 80 led to selective adsorption of ApoE which facilitated crossing of BBB by these particles by binding to LDL receptors (100). Poloxamer precoat helped the conjugated drug deoxorubicin in crossing BBB (101). In the case of rat endothelial cells, PEGylated poly-hexadecylcyanoacrylate nanoparticles had ApoE and ApoB in their corona which helped their crossing of BBB via LDL receptors. The danger with this approach is off-target effect because of the presence of LDL receptors on hepatocytes, with potential toxicity outcomes (98). ,