My academic write-up was reviewed by a referee who is probably a native English speaker, and he marked the following sentence of my article as "bad English", but I don't understand why:
This technique can improve the performance, thanks to its feature A and feature B.
What I meant was that its two features are the main reasons that this technique delivers better performance.
Is there something wrong with this way of using thanks to?
Best Answer
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, "thanks" is informal, and you should avoid using informal English in academic writing.
In situations where informal English is acceptable, "thanks to" is appropriate when referring to people that you really do want to thank for something, or at a pinch an animal like a guide dog, for example
Personally, I don't think that it is appropriate to give thanks to things... an inanimate object, or an abstract concept like an engineering feature or a scientific principle. For situations like this, expressions like "because of" or "on account of" are more appropriate.