Editorial Standards & Ethics
The standard in one sentence
Every claim we publish about your health should survive the question “what is the evidence for that, and how strong is it?”, and the article itself should let you ask it, because the source, the study design and the limitations stay in the story.
How we read a study before we write about it
Most health misinformation is not fabrication; it is real research reported carelessly. Our defence is a fixed set of questions every study gets before it becomes an article:
- Who was studied? Humans or animals, how many, how selected. A finding in forty mice is reported as a finding in forty mice, in the headline as well as the body. Cell-culture results get even more caution.
- What kind of study? A randomised controlled trial, an observational cohort, a cross-sectional survey and a meta-analysis can support very different strengths of claim. Observational studies get “linked to” and “associated with”, never “causes”. We keep that verb discipline even when a looser verb would make a better headline.
- How big is the effect, really? We report absolute risk wherever possible. “Doubles the risk” of something that affects one person in fifty thousand is a very different sentence once the base rate is in it, and we put the base rate in it.
- Is it published and reviewed? Peer review is a floor, not a guarantee, but preprints and conference abstracts are labelled as what they are, and findings that exist only in a press release are treated as claims, not results.
- Who paid? Funding sources and declared conflicts of interest in the research are checked, and mentioned when they bear on how much weight the finding can carry.
- What does the rest of the evidence say? One contrarian study does not overturn a body of evidence, and we do not present it as though it does. Where scientific consensus exists, our coverage says so plainly.
No miracle cures, structurally
The most profitable genre in health content is the miracle: the one food, the one supplement, the one trick. We have made it structurally hard for that genre to appear here. Words like “cure”, “breakthrough” and “miracle” are effectively banned from headlines unless we are reporting on the claim itself critically. Single-study stories must say they are single-study stories. Remedies coverage must state the strength of evidence explicitly, including when the honest statement is “there is no good evidence for this”. If an article cannot be interesting without overstating the science, the article is not interesting enough to run.
Sourcing hierarchy
When sources conflict, we weight them in a fixed order: systematic reviews and meta-analyses of good trials; individual randomised trials; large observational studies; guidance from recognised public health bodies and medical organisations; expert consensus statements; then individual expert opinion, clearly attributed as opinion. Anecdote, testimonial and influencer claims sit at the bottom, and appear in our coverage only as the subject of scrutiny, never as evidence.
Independence
Editorial and revenue do not touch. Advertisers, affiliate partners and PR firms do not see articles before publication, do not get to request topics, and cannot buy a favourable sentence about a product. We accept no free supplements, devices or programs in exchange for coverage, and articles disclose affiliate relationships on the page where they exist. The full funding picture lives in Ownership and Funding; the operational rule here is simpler: if a commercial relationship would embarrass an article, either the relationship or the article does not happen.
Care for the reader
- Fear is not a strategy. We report risks proportionately and do not weaponise health anxiety for traffic.
- Mental health coverage follows established safe-reporting practice, including care around suicide reporting: no methods, no simplistic causes, crisis resources where appropriate.
- Bodies are not a moral scale. Nutrition and fitness coverage avoids shame framing and does not promote extreme restriction or unsafe training practices, whatever is trending.
- Plain language is a duty. If a reader needs a medical degree to spot the caveat, we have hidden the caveat. Limitations go in readable sentences, not footnotes.
Process and tools
Every article is checked by an editor other than its writer before publication, against the sources it cites; the details are in our Fact-Checking Policy. Where software tools assist our workflow, in research, drafting or production, responsibility does not move an inch: an editor verifies every factual claim against primary sources before publication, and the desk stands behind every word as its own. When we fail any of these standards, our Corrections Policy describes exactly how we fix it in the open.
Hold us to this
These standards are public so that failing them is visible. If an article breaks a rule on this page, tell us at support@remedieshealthfitness.com, quote the rule, and expect the article, not the rule, to be the thing that changes.
