Corrections and Clarifications

A comment piece (June 12, 2020) noted that there was “no reason to think [that Covid-19] infections were doubling every three or four days in the week before lockdown”. This interpretation of the available data was based on conclusions reached by the Professor of Statistical Science at Bristol University and the Professor of Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University. The Independent Press Standards Organisation has ruled that the words “no reason to think”, in the context of an article that referred to the claim as part of an “explosion of fake news”, constituted “a claim of fact that evidence for this position was not merely weak but so absolutely lacking that it constituted a demonstrable falsehood”, and that this was significantly misleading because ONS figures, which recorded the number of positive tests not the rate of infection, were capable of pointing to a contrary conclusion.