Abstract
In 2015, Tang et al 2012 was retracted. The paper concerned human research, relevant to public health, conducted in China in 2008. Retraction represents the most severe criticism of a scientific article. This article recounts events over a four-year period and challenges the justification for retraction based on the Committee on Publication Ethics principles.
This research focuses on analysing contemporary (2012–2015) documentary evidence, organised by key narrative participants: Greenpeace, the Chinese Government, Tufts University, the American Society for Nutrition, the US National Institutes of Health, and the US Office for Human Research Protections.
The analysis indicates that technological bias within a university and a learned society, which is also a publisher, led to unethical behaviour and the subsequent retraction. In the USA, oversight of an Institutional Review Board falls under the Office for Human Research Protections. Despite being the principal funder, the NIH's reliance on this office for the retracted paper's research to be publicly available, suggests ineffective oversight.
The retracted paper detailed a crucial nutritional study relevant to combating vitamin A deficiency, a significant cause of child mortality and blindness in Low- and Middle-Income countries. The retraction likely heightened suspicion around this vital public health intervention.
Recommendations are made which are designed to partially ameliorate the injustices perpetrated.