A case of mistaken identity among sharks has led to a correction that changed, among other content, an article’s title, its abstract and the discussion section. Corrected article title: "Novel deep-sea observations reveal twilight zone occurrence for two species of pelagic sharks: the bignose shark Carcharhinus altimus and the silky shark Carcharhinus falciformis."
The changes to the title amend the name of the shark and revoke the range extension for the dusky shark. The updated species ID also required changes in the abstract, paragraphs in the introduction, results, and discussion, a figure caption, and references. The original text, including its original title, is no longer available online.
Margaret Docker was editor-in-chief at the time of the correction. In an email she justified the issuing of a correction rather than a retraction: "[E]ven though the original identification of a dusky shark led to an erroneous depth range extension for this species, in consultation with the authors and Advisory Editor, we felt that enough of the original study was still valid that correcting the misidentification was more appropriate than retracting the whole paper."
