On April ninth 2020 BMJ Paediatrics Open published the paper “Cognitive–behavioural therapy combined with music therapy for chronic fatigue following Epstein-Barr virus infection in adolescents: a feasibility study” online. On May 19th, the journal published a letter to the Editor from a reader drawing our attention to how this trial was reported, noting that the study was presented as a feasibility study when the original trial design was for a fully powered trial.

We undertook a thorough internal review of the original manuscript, the peer review and the editorial process to understand whether and how this had happened. We identified a mistake in the editorial process which led to this misrepresentation of the research that was undertaken. Unfortunately, editorial errors in judgement happen. We wish to transparently acknowledge our error, to correct the scientific record fully and thank the correspondent for bringing this to our attention. We now retract this paper.

We acknowledge that this was not due to error on behalf of the authors. In line with the Committee on Publication Ethics' Retraction Guidelines we decided to pursue the option to retract and republish. With the authors’ agreement, we invited the authors to resubmit their research written up as originally undertaken. This has undergone editorial and peer review as a new submission. It has been published with the DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjpo-2020-000797, and clearly links back to this retracted version so that the history of the paper can be seen.