PLOS ONE corrects authorship on thoracolumbar fascia study in weightlifters
A PLOS ONE correction has amended the author lineup and corresponding author designation for a paper examining thoracolumbar fascia changes in weightlifters with and without low back pain. The journal now lists the eighth and ninth authors in the proper order and identifies Carla Stecco as the correct corresponding author. Her email address is [email protected].
The corrected author sequence now reads: Emma Feng Ming Zhou, Carmelo Pirri, Xiaoxiao Zhao, Juhua Peng, Tao Wen, Jianhui Fang, Chufeng Zhou, Carla Stecco, and Siu Ngor Fu. The paper is affiliated with rehabilitation sciences, human anatomy, and rehabilitation medicine centers in Hong Kong, Padova, and Guangzhou, reflecting the multidisciplinary structure often required in musculoskeletal research.
Authorship corrections can look administrative on the surface. In practice, they touch the core of academic accountability, visibility, and responsibility for a paper’s contents.
Why the correction matters for a musculoskeletal anatomy paper
Research on the thoracolumbar fascia sits at the intersection of anatomy, rehabilitation, sports medicine, and pain science. When a paper addresses structural changes in a fascial complex linked to low back pain in weightlifters, the named investigators carry responsibility not only for the data but for how the work is interpreted by clinicians, trainers, and researchers. Proper author order matters because it signals contribution, academic credit, and the chain of responsibility behind the manuscript.
For a field built on careful structural observation, even a small authorship error can have practical consequences. Readers searching for the corresponding author may contact the wrong investigator, and citation databases may misattribute the paper if the metadata are not corrected. In collaborative work spanning multiple institutions and countries, accurate authorship is part of the scientific record, not an afterthought.
The corrected record also clarifies who should field questions about the study. With Carla Stecco listed as corresponding author, future correspondence about methods, interpretation, or related anatomical inquiries is now directed to the appropriate investigator. In a paper focused on fascia morphology and low back pain, that point matters because the corresponding author often serves as the main clinical and scientific entry point for the broader community.
Correction notices preserve the integrity of the published record
Publishing a correction is one of the few visible ways journals can repair the literature after a metadata error. It does not alter the underlying study title, journal issue, or citation details of the original article, but it does make the authorship record accurate. In this case, the correction preserves the published history of the weightlifter fascia study while fixing two specific problems: the order of the eighth and ninth authors and the corresponding author designation.
The corrected citation identifies the paper as: Zhou EFM, Pirri C, Zhao X, Peng J, Wen T, Fang J, et al. Comparative study of thoracolumbar fascia changes in weightlifters with and without low back pain. PLoS One. 2025;20(12):e0338718. The correction itself is listed as: Zhou EFM, Pirri C, Zhao X, Peng J, Wen T, Fang J, et al. (2026) Correction: Comparative study of thoracolumbar fascia changes in weightlifters with and without low back pain. PLoS One 21(10): e0360981.
The publication date for the correction is October 16, 2026. It remains an open-access notice distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, allowing unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction as long as the original authors and source are credited.
A short correction with lasting editorial consequences
In musculoskeletal and rehabilitation literature, where papers often involve multiple labs and institutions, the author list is more than a line of names. It is the formal map of contribution, accountability, and contact. A correction to that map ensures the record points to the right people.
This is especially relevant in studies of low back pain, where anatomy, imaging, biomechanics, and clinical interpretation often converge. A paper on thoracolumbar fascia changes in weightlifters may draw attention from clinicians managing exertional back pain, researchers studying connective tissue adaptation, and anatomists interested in fascial structure. For all of those audiences, a clean bibliographic record supports accurate retrieval and communication.
The correction does not add new clinical data, change the study question, or modify the conclusions of the original paper. It does something quieter but essential: it restores the published attribution so the work can be cited and queried correctly. In a literature environment where indexing systems, author profiles, and citation trails are tightly linked, that fix protects the scholarly record from avoidable confusion.
What remains unresolved is not scientific, but procedural: how many readers first encountered the original paper before the correction and whether every database will update the authorship metadata with equal speed. For now, the corrected notice stands as the authoritative record for the article’s authorship and correspondence details.