As many visitors to our website will have seen, Caroline Richmond's obituary of David Horrobin (19 April, p 885) sparked a vigorous response from some of our readers about its content. The text contained some factual errors, for which we apologise.
The article said that Efalith was withdrawn and that it contained evening primrose oil; neither of these assertions is correct. Further, GLA is gamma linolenic [not linoleic] acid.
The word “many” can be misleading—we might have said that “some” [not “many”] of Horrobin's 800 or so published papers were published in his own journals.
We were wrong to say that Horrobin set up Laxdale Ltd in the Isle of Lewis. The company was set up in Stirling and has never had a plant in Lewis.
There was some confusion about Horrobin's family. We wrongly suggested that David Horrobin wrote the book The Complete Catalogue of British Cars 1895-1975; it was in fact written by his brother, Peter, and by David Culshaw. We misspelt the name of Horrobin's first wife, Nafisa, and wrongly stated that she took the photographs for her husband's guide book about East Africa; it was in fact Horrobin's father, Frederick, who took the photographs.
Finally, our electronic technology let us down. In the opening sentence of the obituary, the web link to the article about Goran Jamal did not work (although the reference details were correct— BMJ 2003;326: 730. We have now corrected the web link.