Lancet chose to ignore errors in paper on childhood myocarditis
Retractions of papers are sometimes necessary, for example in cases of fraud, fabrication, or findings that are demonstrably unreliable, but the scientific record is not meant to be constantly rewritten
Progress normally occurs in a far more gradual way: hypotheses are proposed, results are reproduced or challenged, evidence accumulates, and conclusions slowly move closer to the truth.
In recent years, however, the retraction process itself has increasingly been used as a tool in scientific disputes.
Papers have been removed not because their results were falsified, but because they were controversial or politically inconvenient.
That is a worrying development. Science depends on open debate and reproducibility, not institutional gatekeeping.
For that reason, we are generally opposed to calls for retraction, but occasionally the situation is different.
In the case of Sampri et al., “Vascular and inflammatory diseases after COVID-19 infection and vaccination in children and young people in England” (Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2025; 9:837–47), we concluded that a retraction request was warranted.
Not because the conclusion is controversial but because the analysis contains multiple structural problems that fundamentally undermine the headline claim.
These include misrepresentation of crude incidence data, comparisons between non-comparable cohorts, instability in sensitivity analyses, and methodological decisions that systematically bias the results in one direction.
This matters because the paper has had substantial mainstream impact, in the UK and globally and was widely cited to support the claim that covid infection poses a greater myocarditis risk to children than vaccination.
When a paper with that level of influence contains major analytical problems, the responsibility on the journal to examine them carefully is particularly high. For that reason, we submitted a detailed retraction request to the journal.
The response from The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health was a single sentence:
“Thank you for your email. We have discussed your request and find no grounds for further action.”
That was the entirety of the reply. No explanation. No engagement with the methodological concerns. No indication that the evidence had been examined.
If this is the standard of scrutiny applied to challenges of influential papers, it raises a serious question about the role of major journals in maintaining the integrity of the scientific record.
Science should not depend on institutional authority. It should depend on evidence.
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