Last updated: August 30, 2026
All About Ticks is written by one person from primary sources, which means mistakes are possible and reader reports are the main way they get caught. If something here is inaccurate, out of date, or worded so loosely that it could mislead someone, we want to know. This page sets out what counts as a correction, how to send one, how we weigh it, and what changes on the page afterwards.
What counts as a correction
- A factual error. A wrong number, a species attributed to the wrong disease, a misstated timeline, a misread source.
- Guidance that has moved on. An agency has revised its recommendation and our page still reflects the old one.
- A source that no longer supports the claim. Health agencies restructure their sites; a link that now lands on a different page is a real problem, not a cosmetic one.
- Misleading emphasis. Everything is technically accurate but the page leaves the wrong impression, usually by omitting a caveat the source carries.
- Ambiguity in something that matters. If a sentence about when to seek care can be read two ways, that is worth fixing.
What we cannot treat as a correction
- Disagreement with the cited authority. If a page accurately reports what the CDC or the Public Health Agency of Canada says and you disagree with the agency, the place to take that is the agency. We can add a sourced counterpoint if one exists in the literature; we will not replace agency guidance with a contrary claim that has no comparable source.
- Requests to add a link, product, or brand. We do not add commercial links on request. See the Advertising Disclosure.
- Personal medical or veterinary questions. These are not corrections and we are not qualified to answer them.
How to report a correction
Email us using the address on the Contact page and include:
- The page URL, or the page title if the URL is awkward to copy.
- The exact sentence or figure you believe is wrong, quoted. This saves us guessing which passage you mean.
- What you believe it should say instead.
- A supporting source, ideally a public health agency, a provincial or state health authority, a university extension service, or a paper with a DOI.
How we evaluate what you send
- Source quality decides ties. We work down the hierarchy set out in the Editorial Policy: public health agencies first, then provincial and state health authorities, then university extension services and peer-reviewed literature. A stronger source beats a weaker one even when the weaker one is more recent.
- We re-read both sources. Yours, and the one already cited on the page. Often the disagreement turns out to be between two agencies rather than between you and us, and the honest fix is to say so on the page.
- Speed depends on the type. A plain factual error, a broken source link, or a typo gets fixed as soon as we have verified it. A claim that requires re-reading surveillance methodology takes longer, and in the middle of tick season it usually does.
- Unsourced reports still get read. If you tell us a passage reads wrong but cannot point to a source, we go back to the primary source ourselves. Plenty of good corrections arrive that way.
What changes on the page
How visible a correction is depends on how much it changes the meaning.
- Typos, grammar, and broken links are fixed without a note. Recording them would add noise without adding accountability.
- Substantive changes update the visible "Last updated" date in the page byline, so a reader can see the page moved.
- Changes that alter what a reader should do are also summarised in the page's "What changed in this update" block. Several pages already carry one, including tick-borne diseases, human diseases, pets and ticks, disease awareness, and tick-borne encephalitis. When a correction lands on a page that has no such block, we add one.
- Where the evidence is genuinely mixed, we rewrite the passage to describe the disagreement and cite both sides rather than pick a winner.
We do not silently rewrite a page to make an old error disappear, and we do not backdate. If a page was wrong for a period, the updated date shows when it was fixed.
If we decide the page is right
We reply and say why, with the source. Nobody has to accept that answer, and you are welcome to come back with a better source. Correctors are not named on the site unless you ask to be, and we do not publish the correspondence.
Corrections are not medical advice
We can correct a page. We cannot tell you whether your symptoms mean anything, because nobody here is a clinician. If you think you may have a tick-borne illness, contact a clinician or your local public health service rather than waiting for a reply from us. The Review Policy explains exactly what review this content does and does not receive.