It looks like there aren’t enough interns at The New York Times to do their fact checking.

This past Sunday we published a clinical trial showing that a metabotropic glutamate receptor agoinst could treat people with schizophrenia. We’re of course delighted that the paper received massive news coverage, including the attention of the BBC and the NYT. But in the case of the latter, reporter Alex Brandon wrote that the findings were published by the journal Nature, which surely doesn’t need any extra visibility over what they already get.

Above and beyond the fact that it’s a shame to miss out on the publicity for our journal, it’s always surprising and a little bit embarrassing that a publication as prestigious as the Times would make such crass mistakes. And it isn’t the first time either. My colleague Myles Axton, editor of Nature Genetics, tells me that, even though his journal published two out of three high-profile papers on the genetics of multiple sclerosis this summer, Nicholas Wade made no mention of Nature Genetics and reported that the findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which published only one of the three papers.

Now, if it’s about making funny mistakes, hats off to the people at AFP, who reported that the paper was published in the fancifully named journal “Nature Science”. Maybe they know something I don’t know, and the paper was turned down by Science before making its way to us. Or maybe our senior management is entertaining a surprise new launch.

Incidentally, I’d like to thank our fact checker for pointing out to me that the NYT reporter who wrote about our paper is Alex Berenson, not Brandon. Maybe we should send him over to the Times to lend a hand.