called for a correction

Background: About a week ago, the New England Journal of Medicine published a correspondence letter titled Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany, which rattles the scientifc community and the rest of the world. Now Science released a news article, saying the claim of asymptomatic transmission is flawed. (In the quotation below, "that phone conversation" refers to the conversation with the woman (the index patient) who said that she did have symptoms during her stay in Germany.)

The question of this thread is whether "called for a correction" is a euphemistic expression "called for the retraction (of the correspondence)." Because the very foundation of the research appears to be flawed.

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Hoelscher was not on the call, he says. “I asked the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority whether the information from that phone conversation called for a correction and I was told that is not the case,” he says. (The Bavarian ministry of health, of which the agency is part, has not responded to a request for information from ScienceInsider.) But RKI disagreed. The agency’s spokesperson confirms that a letter about the error has been submitted to NEJM. <...................>

Source: Science Feb. 3, 2020
Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed

Hi New America,
You certainly read a wide variety of periodical literature. This was a case report, not a research study, so there is no "foundation for the research." It was apparently issued in haste without actually speaking to the patient in question, and was incorrect. Calling for a correction seems to be a perfectly correct and acceptable way of describing the process. (Some people think that asymptomatic transmission does exist, though this particular case does not support that view. But that's another story.)

LVRBC said:

This was a case report, not a research study, so there is no "foundation for the research." It was apparently issued in haste without actually speaking to the patient in question, and was incorrect. Calling for a correction seems to be a perfectly correct and acceptable way of describing the process. (Some people think that asymptomatic transmission does exist, though this particular case does not support that view. But that's another story.)

👁 Thumbs Up :thumbsup:

It appears that I should have used a more vague word "study" rather than "research" there.

Thank you. 👁 Smile :)