When the Japanese government's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hiroyuki Hosoda, referred to this article as inadequate and a misrepresentation of the government-commissioned analysis, Nature responded in an editorial (17 March), saying that: "Japan is right to doubt North Korea's every statement.
Japan's policy seems a desperate effort to make up for what has been a diplomatic failure .. Part of the burden for Japan's political and diplomatic failure is being shifted to a scientist for doing his job-deriving conclusions from experiments and presenting reasonable doubts about them.