"Dear New York Times Editor,
In a recent article about blue cheese, you write:
"To produce Roquefort blue cheese, for example, cheese makers mix Penicillin roqueforti into fermenting curds. "(Sept 24, online and in print)
No, it is not Penicillin roqueforti. It is Penicillium roqueforti. Penicillin is the antibiotic drug derived from some Penicillium fungi. This looks like a typical autocorrection mistake, added after Carl Zimmer wrote the article. Check with Carl Zimmer, I am sure he didn't write it that way.
As you surely know, words matter. Here is the link to the species page for this species in Species Fungorum.
Thank you"
Update - sorry, but the link to Species Fungorum seems to be down because their website is currently down. Try a little later.
Update 2: HAHAHA! New York Times has corrected the spelling to "Penicillim roqueforti". Not sure if this is an improvement...but it certainly is still incorrect. Dear NYT, each species on this earth can have one and only one accurate spelling of its species name.
Update 3: OK, now it is corrected to the correct spelling of the species name. "To produce Roquefort blue cheese, for example, cheese makers mix Penicillium roqueforti into fermenting curds." I suggest you read the article, it is a very good read.
NYT also added a correction at the bottom of the article, but the correction does not refer to wrongly spelled scientific names in earlier versions, but to the isolating of the active compound: "An article on Tuesday about the evolution of molds used for cheese making referred imprecisely to the isolation of the antibiotic penicillin. While Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, he did not isolate the active substance."
