"how a storied journal retracts its support of an article."
In fairness, Nature did not do the investigation to support this retraction.  Rather, eight out of eleven authors on the retracted paper requested Nature retract the paper as they no longer trusted the data reported nor the interpretation of that data.  When one or more authors request a retraction that retraction is pretty much automatic.  In some respects this is simply science correcting an error.  Unfortunately as long as science is done by humans there will be some people that cheat.  Such cheating rarely causes a lot of lasting harm to society as a whole.  Most of the time it simply ruins the cheater by loss of reputation, termination of employment and cancellation of grants for the rest of the cheaters life. 

This is not to say Nature is blameless.  Something obviously went wrong with the review process as about every expert in the field declared this paper highly suspect and not written to usual technical standards immediately on publication.

Dick

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