How We Decide What to Publish

Explaining health science in plain words, free, to people with no medical training.

We publish general health education. We do not diagnose illness and we do not give personal medical advice. We are no substitute for care from a qualified health professional.

Ikechukwu Raymond, who founded the site. No clinician signs off on these articles.

He writes and edits everything published here.

You deserve to know the limits of that as clearly as the scope. This site is not written by clinicians, and it carries no clinical sign-off.

What it does instead is read the published research and the guidance of established health bodies. Then it explains what they found in words anybody can follow. And it says out loud where the evidence is shaky.

Some questions need a judgment about one person. Where an article touches one of those, we say so, and we point the reader to a health professional. Filling that gap ourselves is not our job.

Guidance from major health bodies first, then reviews, then trials, then single studies.

Much of what we use is peer reviewed. That means other researchers checked the methods and the conclusions before it was published.

Think of a building inspector signing off the plans. It catches a great many faults. It does not promise the house will never leak.

So peer review raises the odds. It does not make a study right. Where the evidence is thin or disputed, we say so on the page.

What we reach for, in roughly this order

• Guidance from major health bodies. The World Health Organization, national health services, recognized specialist societies
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• Randomized controlled trials
• Large observational studies
• Smaller studies, animal research, and laboratory work, and only with the limits stated plainly

Some things move. Screening ages. Treatment guidance. Public health advice. For those we favor recent sources. Older sources stay where the underlying science has not budged.

We say nobody is sure, rather than pick the tidier answer.

Most health questions have no clean answer. Day to day, that comes down to a handful of habits we hold ourselves to.

• We write “linked to” or “associated with” when a study shows a link, and save causal words for the cases that earn them
• We name the group a study actually used, especially when it was small, unwell, elderly, or all one sex
• We label animal and laboratory findings as animal and laboratory findings
• We call a modeled estimate an estimate. Nobody counted those deaths one by one
• We say when researchers disagree. Picking the tidier side would be easier and less honest
• We prefer “may lower the risk” to “prevents”

Single causes, guarantees, superlatives, and the idea that health is all your own doing.

• One cause presented as the explanation for a symptom that has many
• Health framed as entirely a person’s own doing. Genes, care, income, environment, and chance all matter too
• Superlatives such as “the single best thing you can do”, where no such ranking exists
• Promised outcomes, timelines, or results from a change of habit
• Any guarantee that a diet, a supplement, or a routine will prevent disease

It goes in, even where it makes the article longer and less tidy.

Where a topic touches something that can go wrong, the practical safety information goes on the page. We would rather do that than leave it out for a cleaner read.

That means the warning symptoms that need urgent care. It means saying when a reader should see a professional instead of handling it alone. And it means the cautions for people with particular conditions, on particular medicines, or who are pregnant.

Nobody pays for a favorable word here, and nobody ever will without you being told.

The site is free to read. No paywall, no subscription.

If we ever take advertising, affiliate links, sponsorship, gifts, or free products, we will say so plainly. And we will keep it away from editorial decisions.

No advertiser, sponsor, or commercial partner gets a say in what we publish, or in how we describe the evidence.

We do not accept payment for a favorable mention of any product, service, clinic, or practitioner.

We expect to, and we would rather find out than not.

Spot an error and tell us. Our Corrections Policy explains how we weigh a report, how fast we act, and how we record what changed.

Three dates on every article, so you can judge how current it is.

Health guidance changes. Every article carries the date it was first published, the date it was last updated, and the date it was last reviewed.

Our How We Review Health Content page sets out what an article goes through before it is published, and after.

Corrections, questions about a source, or anything else about how the site is written.

Get in touch through our contact page.