The Editorial ‘Made of stone’ (Nature 549, 5–6; 2017) appeared online with a poorly worded and offensive headline and standfirst. Taken together with some of the article’s text, this implied that Nature supports retaining statues of historical figures whose work harmed others. This is not the case. As a result, the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph in print should have read “In cases where painful reminders are allowed to stand, they could be supplemented” instead of “Instead of removing painful reminders, perhaps these should be supplemented”. Further discussion of this article can be found in the Correspondence pieces: Statues: a mother of gynaecology, Statues: learn from mistakes and Statues: for those deserving respect. Our apology appears online at go.nature.com/2xgh2j.