A respected science journal has withdrawn a study that collected DNA samples from Tibetans and Uyghurs without informed consent. It comes against the backdrop of China’s increasing crackdown on ethnic minorities in Tibet and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, using tactics such as cultural and religious suppression, mass internment, forced labor, and the separation of families. Human Genetics published a retraction note to the article in early January, stating the authors have “not been able to verify whether appropriate informed consent was obtained from all study participants.” The study, which set out to reexamine the male genetic landscape of China based on almost 38,000 DNA samples for Y chromosome variation across Chinese ethnic communities, used genetic data from Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. It was published in Human Genetics in 2017, the same year reports emerged about Chinese police collecting Uyghurs’ DNA samples for mass surveillance, British solicitor Samuel Pitchford wrote …