I rather admire, on some level, this retraction.

[NNadir]

Retraction of “Lithium Levels in Umbilical Cord Blood from Two Cities in China: Indicating Unidentified Sources of Human Exposure” Yu Li, Xianglian Peng, Nian Liu, Hua Guo, Yurong Jia, Yong Liang, Maoyong Song, Ligang Hu, and Guibin Jiang Environmental Science & Technology 2025 59 (32), 17381-17381

The authors retract this article (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c12959) since ethical approval for a part of the study could not be obtained. Specifically, to include the analysis of lithium in a subset of samples (30 pairs of maternal and umbilical cord blood samples collected from participants at the Tongzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital between December 2020 and March 2021). As such, the article is being retracted.

The original article was published on February 24, 2025 and was retracted on August 6, 2025.

One would think that obtaining ethical approval before doing the work and then publishing it, but that said, to have recognized an ethical lapse and then retracting the paper on discovering it, however it happened, strikes me as honorable.

I have worked in my career on the detection of lithium in animal tissue and in human plasma. It's everywhere now. Getting a blank is a difficult enterprise.

[erronis]

1. Given the fierce battles that authors and journals fight against retractions, this is a pleasant surprise.

Shows the professional and ethical attitude of the authors. Bravo.