We will get things wrong. This page sets out what happens when we do, and what you can expect if you report it.
How to report an error
Email [email protected] or use the contact form. The most useful report includes:
- The URL of the article
- The exact sentence or figure that is wrong
- What it should say, and a source if you have one
You do not need to be a researcher, and you do not need to be polite. A blunt correction is worth more than a wrong article.
What happens next
- Acknowledgement within 3 working days.
- We check it against the primary source. If you are right, we say so.
- We fix it — usually within a day of confirming.
- We disclose it on the article itself.
- We reply to you with what changed.
If we conclude the article was right, we explain why and show our source. Disagreement is a legitimate outcome and we would rather have the argument than quietly ignore you.
How corrections appear
We do not silently edit factual claims. Where a fact changes, a dated note is added at the foot of the article and the modified date is updated:
Correction, 4 March 2026: an earlier version of this article said the study followed participants for two years. It followed them for eighteen months.
The three levels
Correction
A factual error — a number, a name, a date, a study detail, a mischaracterised finding. Fixed and disclosed with a dated note.
Clarification
Nothing was factually wrong, but the wording could reasonably mislead. The text is sharpened and a note added where the ambiguity was material.
Retraction
The article’s central claim does not hold — the paper behind it was retracted, or the piece was wrong in a way correcting cannot fix. The article is withdrawn and replaced with a note explaining what was published, what was wrong, and when it was removed. We do not make pages vanish.
Typos
Spelling and grammar fixes do not get a note. Anything that changes meaning does.
When the underlying research changes
Where a paper we covered is later retracted or corrected, or stronger evidence overturns it, we go back to the article. Depending on severity that means an update with a dated note, or a retraction. Readers who found the article through search months later deserve the same accuracy as readers who found it on day one.
Our record
Corrections stay on the articles permanently. We do not remove them once they are old. A publication with no visible corrections is not a publication that never errs — it is one that does not tell you.