An experiment to impregnate male rats stitched to female rats, by researchers at the Naval Medical University in Shanghai, has stirred debate in China and beyond about the ethics of the work.

The Chinese scientists who published a research study have reportedly tried to retract the paper amid soaring ethical controversy, but later changed their mind and sent a letter to stop the retraction.

“We are just ordinary scientific researchers who do experiments. We also plead to the outside world not to bring issues other than scientific problems into scientific research,” the first author Zhang Rongjia told the Global Times on Wednesday via e-mail.

When asked about the reason for stopping the retraction, Zhang replied, “It is not convenient for us to answer now, but we will give a reply at an appropriate time. Please wait patiently and give us more time.”

Zhang told Global Times that they have contacted The-Intellectual over the media report, saying the media outlet has realized that the report was inconsistent with the facts.

The report was titled “A rat model of pregnancy in the male parabiont” published on June 16 on bioRvix.

Researchers say the experiment was highly contrived and unnecessarily distressing to the animals, and that it offers few insights into the possibility of pregnancy in people assigned male at birth — if anything, the poor success rate suggests that such a goal is a long way off.

As many people believed that the cost for the experimental animals behind the "male rat pregnancy" is too high, the value of the experiment is low and the experiment is not in line with ethical norms.

“The experiment has no social value and just wasted the money taken from taxpayers,” says Qiu Renzong, a bioethicist at the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing.

Chinese scientists are concerned that controversial research, such as this study, could reinforce an “already tainted image of Chinese science”, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, who has conducted research in China over many years. “The study is one of several in recent years that Chinese researchers feel have presented a distorted image of what they believe China’s research culture should be,” she said.

Image Source:  Screenshot from Research paper