Corrections
Every claim our own check found false. Not a summary of them: the list itself, with what is actually the case and the page where we said it.
This page builds itself from the checks, which is the only way a list like this stays honest. A corrections log you have to remember to update stops being updated in the second busy week, and an empty one reads as a claim never to have been wrong. So far 340 claims have gone through the check across 33 pieces, and 1 of them did not survive it.
Howard Florey took a huge gamble. He saved the project by taking it to America, smuggling live spores in his coat.WrongFlorey did travel to America in 1941 to seek industrial support, but the claim about smuggling spores in his coat is not supported by historical sources. Florey worked openly with American pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government; there was no need to smuggle spores. Second checker: Florey did travel to the United States in 1941/1943 to seek help and cooperation; however, the common story that he 'smuggled live spores in his coat' is folklore and not supported by primary documentary evidence–material transfers to U.S. labs were coordinated through scientific channels rather than cloak‑and‑dagger smuggling.Encyclopaedia Britannica, Penicillin; Ligon, B.L. (2004). 'Penicillin: Its Discovery and Early Development.' Journal of Applied Microbiology.Fleming Found Penicillin in 1928. It Took 16 Years to Work.
What happens when a reader catches it first
Write to hello@handorial.com. A correction with a source is the most useful email we can get, it goes on the piece and into this list, and if the error changes the answer it goes out to The Redraw subscribers too. How the checking works is written down in how we check things.