Have you heard? Learning from our mistake.

In these pages, you'll read an article that's unusual for Consumer Reports. It's about tests and results that were wrong.

In the February 2007 issue, we published a report on infant car seats that we later withdrew when we learned of problems with the test data. The details are presented in "How Our Car Seat Tests Went Wrong," on page 30.

We take the mistake very seriously, and so do our readers. Robert Gutierrez of Bedford, Texas, was one of many who wrote us asking for an explanation. "I will also be looking for a statement indicating how you intend to prevent future test procedures from such gross miscalculations," he said.

We're committed to correcting the mistake and preventing similar ones. Beginning now, here's what we'll do differently:

Confer more regularly with outside experts when we're developing complex tests. The mistakes in car seat testing might have been avoided if we'd called on additional safety experts to advise us on new protocols.

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In some cases, we already do that. We spent months consulting with independent experts and with manufacturers of headlights, bulbs, and vehicles to determine the best ways to test headlights. We know that outside expertise can be invaluable, and we'll now regularly consult experts from aca-demia, government, and industry when we're contemplating complex new tests. That said, once we have valid protocols, we'll continue to limit contact with manufacturers, ...