Journal Retracts Study Linking Foreign Investment to Environmental Damage in Vietnam

A widely cited study examining how foreign investment and economic growth shaped environmental degradation in Vietnam since the country’s landmark 1986 economic reforms has been retracted, the latest signal that the scientific literature on development and pollution is not immune to failures in the systems meant to safeguard it. The retraction notice, published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research, states that the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher, Springer Nature, no longer have confidence in the article after determining that its peer review process was not conducted in accordance with the journal’s policies, leaving the integrity of both the review and the resulting editorial decision compromised.

The retracted paper, authored by Duc Hong Vo and Chi Minh Ho of the Research Centre in Business, Economics and Resources at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, was originally published online on 10 February 2021 and appeared in volume 28 of the journal, spanning pages 29795 to 29805. Its subject matter carried obvious weight: Vietnam’s Doi Moi, or Economic Renovation, launched in 1986, transformed one of the world’s poorest countries into one of its most dynamic manufacturing economies, and researchers have long debated whether the foreign direct investment that powered that transformation came at the cost of air, water and soil quality. The retraction does not adjudicate the scientific content of that debate, but it removes one contribution from the record on procedural grounds.

According to the notice, the problem came to light after publication, when it was identified that the peer review process had deviated from the journal’s established policies. Peer review is the gatekeeping mechanism through which independent experts assess a manuscript’s methods, data and reasoning before publication. When that process is subverted, whether through fabricated reviewer identities, conflicts of interest that were not disclosed, or coordinated manipulation of the editorial workflow, the journal cannot verify that the published findings received the scrutiny that readers, and the broader research community, are entitled to assume. In such cases, editors typically conclude that retraction is the appropriate remedy even when there is no specific finding that the underlying data or analysis is fraudulent.

That distinction matters for how the retraction should be read. The notice does not allege that the authors fabricated data, plagiarized work, or manipulated their econometric results. Nor does it identify which specific element of the review process failed. It states only that the integrity of the peer review and the subsequent editorial decision appears to have been compromised, a formulation that journals use when confidence in the validation process itself has collapsed. The authors, for their part, have not explicitly stated whether they agree or disagree with the retraction, leaving the notice to stand as the publisher’s unilateral action based on its assessment of the editorial record.

The substantive question the paper addressed remains a live and contested field of research. Since 1986, Vietnam has pursued a strategy of export-led industrialization that deliberately courted foreign direct investment, culminating in the country’s emergence as a major hub for electronics, textiles and footwear manufacturing. Economists have documented the resulting surge in gross domestic product and household incomes, while environmental scientists have tracked rising industrial emissions, wastewater discharge, and pressure on natural resources. A large literature has examined whether foreign-invested firms pollute more or less than domestic ones, whether economic growth eventually reduces environmental damage once incomes pass certain thresholds, and whether stricter environmental regulation can decouple growth from degradation. Retracted papers on these questions are typically replaced over time by studies that survive rigorous review, but citations to the withdrawn work can persist for years unless readers check retraction databases.

The retraction also illustrates the mechanics of modern scholarly correction. The notice carries its own digital object identifier, 10.1007/s11356-026-38248-z, which is distinct from the DOI of the original article, 10.1007/s11356-021-12838-5, ensuring that both the withdrawal and the withdrawn paper remain separately identifiable in the scholarly record. The original article page remains online, now linked to the retraction notice, and the publisher’s CrossMark service flags the current status of the document to readers who encounter it in the future. This architecture is designed to prevent the quiet disappearance of flawed work while making its retracted status impossible to miss.

Retractions tied to peer review manipulation have become a recurring concern across scientific publishing, and publishers have invested in detection tools that flag reviewer email domains, submission patterns and citation behaviors associated with coordinated manipulation. Journals in environmental science and economics have been particularly exposed, in part because the fields attract large volumes of submissions from researchers under intense pressure to publish, and in part because econometric studies of policy questions can appear superficially plausible even when the underlying review process was never properly performed. The retraction of a single paper is a small event in isolation, but each notice contributes to a dataset that publishers and integrity researchers use to identify systemic vulnerabilities.

For Vietnam-focused research, the practical consequence is that policymakers, students and other scholars should no longer treat the 2021 findings as validated evidence. The country’s environmental trajectory since Doi Moi continues to be studied through many other channels, including national statistics on emissions and energy use, satellite-based monitoring of air quality and land cover, and firm-level analyses of industrial pollution. The withdrawal of one study does not diminish the importance of the underlying question: whether Vietnam, and countries following similar development paths, can sustain rapid growth while containing the environmental costs that historically accompanied industrialization. It simply means that the evidence base must be drawn from work that has passed unhindered through editorial scrutiny.

The notice, published on 22 September 2026, closes by noting the publisher’s neutrality with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations, standard language that accompanies Springer Nature retractions. Correspondence for the original article was directed to Duc Hong Vo at Ho Chi Minh City Open University, where both authors are affiliated with the CBER research centre. As with all retractions, the scientific community’s response will be measured not by the notice itself but by whether citations to the withdrawn paper decline and whether the questions it raised are taken up by studies whose provenance can be trusted.

Subject of Research: Retraction of a study on foreign investment, economic growth, and environmental degradation in Vietnam since the 1986 Economic Renovation due to compromised peer review.

Article Title: Retraction Note: Foreign investment, economic growth, and environmental degradation since the 1986 “Economic Renovation” in Vietnam

Article References: Vo, D. H., & Ho, C. M. (2026). Retraction Note: Foreign investment, economic growth, and environmental degradation since the 1986 “Economic Renovation” in Vietnam. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-026-38248-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11356-026-38248-z

Keywords: retraction, peer review integrity, foreign direct investment, Vietnam, Doi Moi 1986, economic growth, environmental degradation, Springer Nature, research integrity, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, econometrics, Ho Chi Minh City Open University