Ethics Policy

Health publishing carries obligations that ordinary publishing does not. A reader who acts on a lifestyle article has wasted an afternoon. A reader who acts on a health article may have delayed treatment. Our ethics follow from that difference.

Reader safety comes before traffic

The content that performs best in this category is the content we refuse to publish. Cure claims, dramatic transformations, and “doctors won’t tell you this” framing all work, and all of them cost readers something. Giving up that traffic is not a side effect of our editorial standards — it is the standard.

Honesty about uncertainty

We publish “we don’t know” as a finding. Where evidence is thin, the evidence label says so; where studies conflict, the article says so. Presenting a confident answer we do not have would be more readable and less true.

Respect without credulity

Traditional practice is treated as what it is: a cultural inheritance with real historical depth and an uneven research base. We neither dismiss it nor inflate it. Both failures are common in this space, and readers deserve better than a choice between them.

No commercial interest in our own conclusions

We sell no supplements, carry no ingestible-product affiliate links, take no consultation fees and accept no clinic referral arrangements. A publication with a financial stake in its own evidence labels cannot be trusted to set them.

Sponsored content is clearly labelled, passes the same review pipeline as editorial, and can be refused. No sponsor sees an article before publication, and no sponsor may influence an evidence label or a myth-check verdict.

Conflicts of interest

Editors and medical reviewers disclose relevant financial and professional interests, and these are published on their profile pages. A reviewer with an interest in a product or practice does not review content about it.

Named accountability

Every article carries a named author. Every health-substantive article carries a named medical reviewer with verifiable credentials. Anonymous health advice is not something we publish, because there is nobody to hold to it.

Corrections over quiet edits

When we get something wrong we correct it visibly and log it. We do not silently delete an article that turned out to be mistaken — the record of having been wrong is part of what makes the rest credible.

Privacy

Health interest is sensitive personal data. We collect as little as possible, anonymise analytics, and do not build profiles of readers based on the health topics they read. See our privacy policy.

Treating misinformation as harm, not as competition

Our myth-check desk exists to correct false claims, not to score points. Corrections name the claim and the evidence, not the individual who shared it — most people forwarding a health message are trying to help someone they care about.

Raising a concern

Write to [email protected]. Concerns about accuracy go to [email protected].