Policy
Editorial policy
A short statement of who answers for the pages, what is checked before one is published, and what money is and is not allowed to change.
The desk is responsible for everything published on this site: the choice of subject, the wording, the sources named, and any error that survives review. There is no guest byline and no unattributed contribution. Where a page has been corrected, the correction is the desk's, and it is dated in the page.
What is checked before a page appears
Every page of substance is read a second time against the sources it names, sentence by sentence, before it is published. The review asks three questions of each factual sentence: is there a named source, does the source actually say this, and is the sentence describing rather than advising. A sentence that fails any of the three is rewritten or removed. A page that cannot be brought through that review is not published; it is not published with a warning note attached, which is the same thing as publishing it.
What this site does not publish
No medical advice, no interpretation of an individual's images or results, no diagnosis, no treatment recommendation, and no page whose purpose is to answer the question of what a particular reader should do. No prices, no waiting times, no clinic or practitioner names, no contact routes into a healthcare organisation. No invented statistic, no invented source, no invented date, and no figure carried over from a source that cannot be checked.
Links out, and money
Some outbound links on this site may form part of a commercial arrangement. When that is so, the arrangement never decides what a page says. The facts, the sources and the wording are settled first, from the accepted source list in sources and method, and are not revised afterwards to suit anyone. No clinical claim, no dose figure, no description of a procedure and no statement about the regulations is ever the subject of a commercial arrangement, and no page is published whose purpose is to carry a link. Any arrangement that would require a sentence about health to be changed is refused rather than disclosed.
Complaints and corrections
A reader who believes a page is wrong, unclear or over the advice line can write to the desk. The page will be checked against its sources. If it is wrong it is corrected and dated; if it is right the reasoning is explained. The address is on contact the desk, and what is done with the message is on the privacy page.