Regret the Error

Naming names

An article on Page 50 of The Times Magazine today, about Sam Nunn, head of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, misstates the name of a company on whose board he serves. It is Chevron, not ChevronTexaco. The article also misspells the surname of a former secretary of state with whom Nunn and others wrote a recent op-ed article for The Wall Street Journal. He is George P. Shultz, not Schulz. And the article misspells the surname of the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in several references. He is Mohamed ElBaradei, not ElBaredei. Link

And we don't know who it was

In her column "A good year for the F-word" (15 January 2007), Kira Cochrane suggested that the writer Nirpal Dhaliwal had appeared on Newsnight Review last year wearing an "ill-advised white satin bomber jacket". This was, in fact, a case of mistaken identity. We apologise for this error, and we are happy to make clear that Dhaliwal has never appeared on Newsnight Review, nor ever owned such a garment. Link

The trouble with deadlines

The issue of Parade magazine included in today's editions of The Sun contains an item in the "Personality Parade" column saying that Barbaro is in improving health. Because the magazine's publication schedule runs weeks in advance of distribution, the item was written before the horse's death and could not be corrected in time. Link

Parade is the Sunday magazine distributed in over 380 US newspapers. This correction ran in the Baltimore Sun, among others.
 

Come again?

Several readers complain that the dancing cow illustrating Feedback, 20 January, appears to have six teats. It was of course drawn as seen by an intoxicated fellow dancer. Link

The original item, without illustration, is below. Honestly, though, it doesn't really make the correction any more clear. Where does intoxication fit in? Let us know what we might be missing.

...Farmers in Ontario, Canada, have been having trouble with their cattle, according to reports in the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail. The animals have been giving less milk, kicking and, the farmers swear, dancing - or as one puts it, standing up in their stalls to "wiggle their back ends".
The farmers blame this unusual behaviour on stray voltage, which builds up on farm surfaces, we are told, because electrical utilities are sloppy about how they install transformers and wiring, allowing currents to flow to ground where they shouldn't. This, the farmers say, creates electric fields that are generally too small for humans to feel - but a big animal like a cow has more voltage across itself in such a field than a human and feels a tingle.
The farmers are so upset that the law may soon be invoked to force the utilities companies to install things more carefully - and while they are at it, the farmers suggest, they might relearn what they were taught in their first-year electrical engineering classes. We're not sure this is the whole story, though. Dancing cows? Stray voltages? Has anyone checked for corn circles as well?

UPDATED: Of letters and corrections and the New Yorker

The latest issue of the New York Observer includes an interesting tale about a (sort of) correction by the New Yorker. A recent article by staff writer, and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, Nicholas Lemann included two errors. Rather than running a correction, the magazine chose to publish a reader's letter that addressed the inaccuracies. Also of note: the online version of the article appears to be uncorrected.
The Observer piece offers some interesting history about corrections in the magazine, and it also explains the New Yorker's decision to run a letter rather than a correction. As the piece shows, the magazine does have a history of running corrections. We've also recently seen an editor's note. 
It seems strange, and perhaps disappointing, that a magazine revered for its commitment to fact checking wouldn't hold to a standard for corrections. It's also somewhat ironic considering the New Yorker's history of re-printing amusing errors and corrections from other publications. A bit of New Yorker trivia: that very practice was one of the reasons why Harold Ross, the magazine's founder, decided to push for a higher standard of accuracy in 1927. The other reason was a particularly error-riddled profile that ran in the magazine at the time. Like this recent example, the article was corrected via a letter sent to the magazine, but there was one glaring difference: the letter carried the headline, "WE STAND CORRECTED." A bit easier to spot...
As a final comment on this recent example, we'll note that publications such as Sports illustrated run letters pointing out errors, but these are typically followed by an acknowledgement by the editors in order to confirm the mistakes. Here's an example for you. This is the ideal way to handle corrections via letters, though it should be said that a clearly headlined, stand-alone correction is preferable. Readers need to be given an easy way to spot corrections. UPDATE: The latest issue of the New Yorker (Feb 12) just hit our mail slot and it includes this correction on the letters page:

CORRECTION: James Surowiecki's Financial Page on January 22nd stated that Kenneth Langone was on the G.E. board's compensation committee that approved a generous retirement package for Jack Welch in 1996; in fact, Langone did not join G.E.'s board until 1999.

So did the magazine decide to change back to printing corrections? Or was there a reason this error was handled in a different way? We hope it's the former.
Now enjoy the Observer piece. Excerpts below.

In its Feb. 5 issue, The New Yorker published a message describing factual errors in a Jan. 29 “Talk of the Town” piece by Nicholas Lemann about the trial of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Mr. Lemann had mistakenly claimed that “Joseph Wilson was dispatched by ‘the White House’ to Niger … (he was sent by the C.I.A.)” and that Mr. Wilson had “published his Times Op-Ed piece ‘five months’ after his return (it was a year and five months).”
The message appeared not in an editors’ correction but in a piece of reader mail, a letter from James Currin of Stamford, Conn...
By legend, the factual infallibility of The New Yorker is both assumed and presumed. Its fabled team of fact-checkers—16 of them at present—vets every detail of the magazine before it reaches the reader. And if the errors that get through are rare, acknowledgements of those errors get through even less often.
...the magazine has printed letters since at least 1936. And under editor David Remnick, corrections have been appearing as stand-alone items, the industry standard. They are, however, easy to miss, as there have only been about two dozen corrections or editors’ notes since 1999. (A new one appeared in the Feb. 12 issue.)
...The handling tended to be arch: In 1940, after being corrected by the editors of Fortune, The New Yorker wrote, “Wrong was the New Yorker, and to the editors of Fortune our check for five dollars for discovering the error.”
The present approach is more measured. Corrections are presented as frank admissions of failure. But in the case of Mr. Currin’s letter, the concession was not quite straightforward.
Mr. Currin, who is the father of celebrated figurative painter John Currin, wrote in to question four assertions that Mr. Lemann had made. Two of his points were matters still under dispute, while the other two—about the provenance of Mr. Wilson’s assignment and the date of his Times Op-Ed piece—were verifiable facts that Mr. Lemann had gotten wrong.
In an e-mail to The Observer, Peter Canby, the head of the fact-checking department, wrote that the errors Mr. Currin pointed out could have been addressed in a formal correction notice. But Mr. Canby wrote that since he and letters editor Brenda Phipps “had a letter in hand that both set the record straight on the erroneous facts and also went on to some other widely debated points of interpretation,” they decided to let Mr. Currin’s letter speak for itself.
Except that Mr. Currin’s note, as written, did not set the record straight. The original draft, according to a copy supplied by Mr. Currin, merely quoted the parts that Mr. Currin thought were wrong. The parenthetical clarifications, explaining what the correct facts had been, showed up after The New Yorker edited the letter.
In other words, the editors wrote a functional correction after all—they just credited it to Mr. Currin.
“Maybe that’s the New Yorker way of correcting an error,” Mr. Currin said. “A graceful way.”

Lessons in geography etc.

In "May I See Some I.D.?" (TIP SHEET, Jan. 29) we erroneously referred to Nassau as a Caribbean country. It is, in fact, a city. Link (at bottom)

The Lancet publishes results of inquiry into potential conflict of interest

Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households was published online on Aug 31, 2006, and in print on Sept 2, 2006.1 Within days, The Lancet was informed that co-author Athena Kolbe had previously written about Haiti as a journalist under the name of Lyn Duff. Because Kolbe had worked as a volunteer at an orphanage in Haiti founded by President Aristide and had written sympathetically about Aristide after he was deposed,2 concerns were expressed about the paper's findings.
In response to credible allegations that one author's former activities might constitute an undisclosed conflict of interest, The Lancet began an inquiry.3 The authors' institution, Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan, USA) was asked to investigate the matter, and the issue was referred to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Eileen Trzcinski, Professor and Interim Director of Research at Wayne State University School of Social Work, audited 100 questionnaires selected by computerised randomisation. Outcome details on the original handwritten records corresponded with the project's computerised database. The overall distribution of rapes and murders were re-analysed according to alleged perpetrators, and the results agreed with the published findings. Outcomes were then compared by political affiliation of the interviewer and for Kolbe's own data (as an interviewer). Again, there was no evidence of systematic bias. On the basis of this investigation, The Lancet has confidence in Kolbe and Hutson's findings as published.
COPE recommended that readers should be made aware that Athena Kolbe had published as a reporter under the name of Lyn Duff, and that failure to disclose a separate name, under which relevant material had been published and cited in her Lancet paper, constitutes an undeclared conflict of interest. The Lancet's position on transparent disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is in accordance with guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.4 The Lancet has made this position prominently available to readers5 and to authors,6 and stated clearly that incomplete disclosures will be amended in a published statement in the Department of Error section, which will also be linked electronically to the publication in electronic databases. Such a correction for this study appears in today's Lancet.
To realise their full potential to benefit populations, research findings must influence practice. Intelligent debate of scientific misconduct. It is unfortunate, however, that in this case much of the debate was aimed at exploiting historical divisions in Haiti. That process has obscured the message of Kolbe and Hutson's research and detracted from the real issue-the welfare of civilians in Haiti-to whom attention should now turn.

Sports Illustrated corrects dirty hoax report

The Sign of the Apocalypse that you ran about the Gator Bowl incident involving a West Virginia fan in the Georgia Tech band seating area (Scorecard, Jan. 15) was false and based on an Internet hoax. I attended the Gator Bowl and was pleased to watch our beloved Mountaineers finally win after many unsuccessful attempts. I was further proud to witness great sportsmanship from fans for both teams when exiting the stadium. Please don't ruin this experience for our fans and our state.
Tammy Estrada, Savannah, West Virginia class of 1992
EDITORS NOTE: SI regrets the error.

The hoax that SI reported entailed a fan defecting defecating* in the stands. The magazine should have run a more detailed correction rather than just printing a letter and appending a four word editor's note. More on this here.

*Correction: This post originally used the word "defecting" instead of defecating. It was corrected on February 5. And this correction initially made the same error. We regret the errors.

Retirement is death

In our December cover story on the "Top Advisors Under 40" (page 34), we erroneously reported that a former partner of UBS advisor Brian K. Albach, had died. In fact, Albach's partner is still alive and retired from UBS in 2002.

Gender issues

From the February 5-11 issue of TV Guide:

Oops! Actress Candis Cayne was erroneously referred to as a female impersonator (Behind the Scenes, 2/15)