The following article has been retracted from publication in Annals of Human Biology: Anthropometric characteristics and nutritional status of Kondh: A tribal population of Kandhmal District, Orissa, India. Arnab Ghosh, Sanjib Kumar Bala. Volume 33, Issue 5, 2006, pp. 641–647.
In February 2008, an inquiry about details and inconsistencies in the publication was sent to the Editors from interested readers. Specifically, the percentages of chronic energy deficiency (CED) grades III, II and I reported in Table 3 and Table 4 are different. In Table 3, CED grades III, II and I are reported as 21.5, 23.3 and 31.0%, respectively. However, in Table 4 these are reported as 31.3, 34.0 and 19.9%, respectively. Upon request, the authors were unable to resolve this. With the authors’ permission the Editors published a Corrigendum in Volume 35 no 6 of the journal describing the above inconsistency and deleting Table 4.
An additional inconsistency in the publication was brought to the Editors’ attention in December 2008 about the basis for estimating CED considering the BMI distribution reported, with implications for the quality of the data reported. The authors were unable to resolve this as the data had been lost due to computer failure.
The Editors have decided to retract the original publication and Corrigendum because of the inability of the authors to answer the questions about data inconsistencies due to the reported loss of the data.
The Editors apologize for not having reviewed more closely the manuscript and approving publication of work that could not withstand normal scrutiny by interested readers. The Publishers wish to state that Annals of Human Biology published the article in good faith. The Editors and Publishers welcome this opportunity to clarify the importance of publication of scholarly reports that are held to the highest standards of not only peer and editorial review, but also readers’ questions about the quality and consistency of methods, data and inferences in our publications.