Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Genetics Papers

[infoseek12]

It will be interesting if a lot of research gets published in Chinese journals and not the West. If this happens I wonder if Western researchers will get their information from Chinese journals or lag a bit behind Chinese researchers on the answers to these questions.

[fnordpiglet]

If you’re willing to cut ethical corners in one dimension there’s no reason to believe you won’t in other dimensions. Doing rigorous research with honesty, transparency, and ethically is interrelated. That’s why being a reputable journal is so important - presumably the standards are high and the research is more reliable, and citing it is more credible. While not consistently true or universally true, it’s at least true the less reputable journals are known to be … less reputable. So, yes, you could republish in less reputable journals, but other researchers will assume a low quality result intermixed with fraud, unethical practice, and lack of transparency. Fair or not Chinese journals don’t have a reputation for quality like mainstream journals, even among Chinese researchers. Finally a Chinese language journal has almost no readership outside of China, further diminishing the impact of your research. Even citing the research in an international journal would be problematic.

[dekhn]

In the late 1800s and early 1900s there was a lot of world-class science going on in England and Germany and most of it didn't get translated, which led to both countries being somewhat behind the advances of the other. The Dutch and Danish played a big role in mediating between those two countries, which were in intense competition at that point.

I've long assumed that if China continues to invest in its research culture, eventually (probably even now) there is research being published in Chinese (I assume that means Mandarin, but I am not knowledgeable on specifics) that would be extremely valuable. Areas like material sciences, optics, EE, MEMS, etc.

But I think since the US has so much cultural exchange with China, and so many Chinese-speaking residents, that probably any really important stuff will get translated.

[worik]

Mēh!

Let the Chinese authorities burden themselves with questions of DNA markers and ethnic groups

Eugenics has not done anyone any good, and when used as a means of controlling populations it goes to very dark places

If the whole stack is not kept ethical, it is not ethical at all. If not ethical then it tends to evil

[COGlory]

No. No one trusts Chinese research to be:

A) accurate B) reproducible

Even in Western journals it's frequently suspect.

[glerk]

What does a “retraction” mean in this field? Are the results of these papers considered incorrect?

[tomohelix]

It means the publisher no longer host/publish the papers. This can be done at the request of the author or by the publisher in the case of a controversy.

In this case, it seems there is no particular issues with the content of the paper, just that the way the data was collected was not appropriate. A case can be made about the narrow set of data (focused on minority groups) and thus how representative the data is to whatever claims made in the paper. But that require a deeper read into the papers themselves and has nothing to do with the main complain, i.e. ethical concerns.

[blacksqr]

Reading the linked article reveals that incorrectness was not the issue, but the unethical way that the genetic samples in the study were obtained.

[downvotetruth]

https://archive.is/0oJG7

[olliej]

cheers

[aragonite]

The submitted title is misleading. There's no allegation much less any definitive finding of unethical collection: the justification was that the "[consent] documentation was not sufficiently detailed to resolve the concerns raised". (Obviously they were deemed sufficient at the time of initial publication). One wonders what detail level would suffice in the current political climate, especially to address the concern of someone who believes that the mere fact of having some co-authors affiliated with public security authorities "voids any notion of free informed consent".[1]

The actions of individuals like Moreau also have significant unintended consequences such destroying the careers of junior academics such as Halimureti Simayijiang, who is Uyghur & even got his PhD from University of Copenhagen but who was unfortunate enough to have developed a research interest in forensic genetics. Basically no research Halimureti does will have any chance of being published in a Western journal given the campaign of folks like Moreau.[3]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/china-retracts...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/29/academic-paper...

http://www.fyagctu.com/news/?web_28.html

[3] (from the guardian piece cited) In an email to Irene Tracey, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, which was seen by the Guardian, Moreau said: “The standard for informed consent is free informed consent,” which he argues is impossible in the context of Xinjiang.

[goodSteveramos]

Does anyone have a detailed explanation of how these studies were unethical? Its all quite vague.

[bnprks]

I think this 2019 article from the NY Times gives a reasonable introduction [1]. In short, the concern is that China is developing genetic databases as part of its state surveillance and repression of the Uighur people in Xinjiang. So the idea might be, for example, that if the Chinese state can obtain the DNA of a dissident they can identify family members to threaten or harass.

The research in question is directly related to finding and cataloging genetic markers that could be used in such a surveillance database. And with no way to credibly verify that the genetic samples were given with full consent, it seems probable that the studies themselves were part of this project to create an Orwellian surveillance state for certain minorities in China. Needless to say, western journals would prefer to not be accomplices to these human rights abuses, hence the retractions.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-u...

[georgeburdell]

Similar controversy surrounds whether Nazi medical research may be cited. I (ironically) cite no sources, but I believe the consensus is that they may be cited if a) they are methodologically sound and b) other studies cannot serve as a substitute.

I am personally of the opinion that “information wants to be free” and ethics is not a reason to ignore methodologically-sound, published science. Punish the researchers, perhaps

[g-b-r]

This is a way to punish the researchers

If the consequences of these behaviors are negligible others will be encouraged to do it as well

[nicklecompte]

Without commenting on the veracity of these specific allegations (it seems there is some controversy):

The root cause of the replication crisis is that academics are given a tacit assumption of trust: if you read a peer-reviewed paper, you should be able to trust the conclusions without redoing all the experiments/analysis yourself. Sadly this trust is often not deserved.

As a matter of editorial policy, researchers who are unethical in collecting samples shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt in analyzing those samples. Instead of carefully auditing their tainted results, it’s better to redo the experiment from scratch with a more trustworthy team.

[dgacmu]

This does punish the researchers - no citations, no publication to list in their cv. It hits them where they almost certainly care a lot. Absent cooperation from their home institution, the journals don't have much other leverage.

[cvalka]

If the results and reasoning are sound, it's absolutely bonkers not to cite the source. This is a not criminal trial and the exclusionary rule should not apply here.