Nature Physics 8, 185–189 (2012); published online 15 January 2012; corrected after print 12 March 2012 and 1 August 2012.

In the version of this Letter originally published, in the Methods section under the heading 'Error and disturbance in spin measurements: theoretical determination' the equation defining η(B) was incorrect — the term σϕ should have been divided by 2 as shown below. This error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the Letter.