Cosmic Ray Proton Background Could Explain ATIC Electron Excess

We show that the excess in the Galactic electron flux recently published by Chang, et al. (Nature, 20 Nov. 2008) can have a simple methodical origin due to a contribution from misidentified proton induced electron-like events in the ATIC detector. A subtraction of the cosmic ray proton component from the published ATIC electron flux eliminates this excess in the range of 300 to 800 GeV.