Confusing myopia with hypermetropia is dangerous

EDITOR—The front cover of the BMJ on 18 May 2002 included an important error. Above the headline, “Myopia: does reading damage your eyes?” was a photograph of a man and boy with hypermetropia, the opposite condition. Hypermetropia, or long sightedness, is corrected by spectacles with convex (magnifying) lenses that make the eyes appear larger, as shown in the photograph. By contrast, myopia (near sightedness) is corrected by concave lenses, which make the eyes appear smaller.

Figure 1 of the article itself showed a girl wearing myopic spectacles, though the degree of myopia was only modest, about −2 D and certainly not the high (pathological) myopia referred to in the …