There are quality control checks, however. Colleagues, peer reviewers, editorial boards and editors apply their professional judgment to ensure that meritorious manuscripts are accepted and published. Copy editors, proofreaders and even computerized spelling checkers are indispensable in ensuring that what appears in print is what was intended. Librarians, indexers and database producers take pains to see that bibliographic data are accurately recorded; a reversed digit in a year or volume number can make it difficult to locate an article.
Nevertheless, even with all these controls, errors do occur. Sometimes the errors are embarrassing but inconsequential. On the cover of the November 10, 1978 issue of that prestigious journal, the title SCIENC appeared in 72-point type. However, a small error, typographically speaking, can be serious. A dosage figure cited as 1.0 that should have been 0.1 could have fatal consequences.
For six months in 1986, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) ...
