Some errors in the BMJ lie dormant for quite some time before detection, as has happened with a reference cited in Editor's Choice from 10 April 1999 (vol 318). In the first paragraph the image of the “champagne glass of world poverty” was wrongly attributed to a World Bank report. In fact, it can be found in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 1992 at www.undp.org/hdro/92.htm.