Why we have no clinical reviewer
Nearly every health site you land on carries a line like “medically reviewed by Dr. Somebody, MD”. We do not, and it was a deliberate choice rather than an omission.
What that badge usually means
The short answer
A medical review badge typically means a licensed clinician was paid to read the page and did not object to it. It rarely means they researched it, wrote it, or checked the underlying sources. It is a real signal, but a weaker one than the presentation implies, and it is frequently attached to pages selling the reviewer’s own services.Why we decided against it
In this specific niche, the clinicians most willing to review content about contested gut diagnostics are, disproportionately, clinicians who sell consultations for contested gut diagnostics. Attaching one to this site would import exactly the commercial interest we built the site to avoid, while giving readers an authority signal we had not actually earned.
There is also a straightforward honesty problem. A reviewer badge invites you to trust the page more. If the review is thinner than you imagine, we have borrowed trust under a slightly false pretence. We would rather have less trust that is accurately calibrated.
What we do instead
- Every citation carries its evidence tier, so you can see whether a claim rests on a guideline or on a conference abstract.
- Sources at weaker tiers cannot be cited without a stated limitation. The build fails otherwise.
- Where specialists disagree we say they disagree and name both positions, rather than picking whichever one makes a tidier page.
- Every price carries the date we checked it, and the build fails rather than letting a stale one quietly keep rendering.
- We state plainly, on every page, that we are not clinicians and that none of this is medical advice.
What this means for you
Read this site the way you would read a careful, well-sourced article by someone who is not your doctor, because that is exactly what it is. Take anything that matters to a clinician. We are useful for working out which questions to ask and which tests can actually answer them. We are not a substitute for someone who can examine you.