The general advisory nature of the Careers article 'How to survive as a whistle-blower' (Nature 532, 405; 2016) meant that it purposely did not discuss the case used as an example in detail. For clarity, it should be noted that as a result of the university's initial internal inquiry into the case, the co-authors were recommended to submit a list of errors to the journal in question. The editor-in-chief of the journal ultimately elected to retract the paper. In addition, a subsequent external inquiry concluded that although there had been misconduct by one researcher, there was no misconduct by the travelling supervisor referred to in the article, and there was no intentional wrongdoing. It also found that some of the allegations were not substantiated.