Standards
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to know. Students act on what they learn, so an uncorrected error on this site eventually reaches a patient.
Report an error
Email [email protected] with as much of this as you have:
- The page address.
- The sentence or the question that is wrong, quoted or described.
- What the correct answer is, if you know it.
- A source, if you have one. A textbook edition and page is plenty.
You do not need to be certain and you do not need a citation. A message that says "the zonal gradient on this page looks backwards to me" is worth sending. We would rather check ten reports and find nine of them fine than miss the tenth.
What happens next
- We check it. Every report is read by a person and checked against the source the page cites.
- Safety first. If an error could lead a reader to a wrong clinical action, the page is corrected or pulled the same day, before anything else in the queue.
- A physician signs off. Any change to clinical content is reviewed before it publishes, and the page's medical review date resets.
- We tell you what we did. If you left a return address, you get an answer, including the cases where we looked and concluded the page was right.
What counts as a correction
A correction is a change to something that was wrong: an inaccurate clinical claim, a mislabeled figure, a question with no correct answer or more than one, a citation that does not support the claim attached to it, or a page that contradicts current guidance. Rewriting for clarity, adding a section or improving a diagram is an update, not a correction, and does not carry a correction notice.
How corrections are logged
Substantive corrections to clinical content are noted on the page itself, and the page carries the date it was last reviewed and last changed. We do not quietly edit a clinical claim and leave the old review date standing, because that date is the whole basis on which a reader decides to trust the page.
If you are a physician, a faculty member or a program director and you find something here that should not be taught, say so plainly and we will act on it. Correcting the record matters more to us than being right in public.
Related
See the editorial policy for how pages are written, medical review for who reviews them, and sources for what we cite.