Editorial & Medical Review Policy

Editorial standards

Mike’s Balance is an independent health and longevity publication. This policy explains who is responsible for content, how evidence is selected and labelled, how medical review works, and how corrections, uncertainty and conflicts of interest are handled.

Named accountabilityAuthors and reviewers should be identifiable, with background and scope available to readers.
Evidence firstStronger medical claims require stronger and more relevant sources.
Visible uncertaintyConflicting evidence, limitations and hypotheses should not be hidden.
Correct the recordMaterial factual or sourcing errors should be corrected rather than preserved silently.

Who is responsible for the content?

Articles should identify the author, and medical review should identify the reviewer when one has reviewed that specific article. Reader-facing bylines should lead to background information about the people involved.

Our current authors and reviewers are listed on the Authors & Reviewers page. Mikhail Faranov, MD, is an otolaryngologist (ENT physician) and medical author/editor whose clinical specialty is ENT. His profile and credential sources are published separately.

Medical review is scope-specific. An MD credential is not treated as specialist expertise across every health topic. Outside a reviewer’s specialty, the weight of the conclusion should come from the quality and relevance of the published evidence.

Four levels of information

Mike’s Balance separates different kinds of claims instead of presenting them as one level of certainty.

Published evidence

Clinical guidelines, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomized trials and other peer-reviewed research.

Clinical context

How findings are commonly interpreted in medicine, including uncertainty and situations where professional evaluation is appropriate.

Personal observation or experiment

Measurements or experiences reported by an author. These can generate hypotheses but do not establish a general medical effect.

Hypothesis or interpretation

An idea that goes beyond what the cited evidence directly demonstrates and should be identified as such.

Source hierarchy

For medical claims, we generally prefer the strongest source that directly answers the question. A practical hierarchy is:

  1. Current clinical guidelines and major public-health or professional organizations, where they directly address the question.
  2. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses, with attention to study quality and heterogeneity.
  3. Randomized controlled trials, especially when discussing interventions.
  4. Observational studies, used with appropriate caution about confounding and causality.
  5. Mechanistic, laboratory and animal research, useful for plausibility but not treated as equivalent to demonstrated clinical outcomes.

Primary research is preferred when an article discusses a specific experimental result. News stories, commercial pages, social-media posts and anecdotes may provide context, but they should not substitute for stronger evidence when stronger evidence exists.

How medical review works

  1. Check whether the main medical claims are supported by the cited source and whether the source actually studied the population and outcome being discussed.
  2. Check important clinical context, including red flags, contraindications, uncertainty and whether a claim could be misread as individual medical advice.
  3. Distinguish association, mechanism and hypothesis from evidence of a clinically meaningful effect.
  4. Check whether the reviewer’s own clinical scope is relevant to the article. Where it is not, do not imply specialist authority that is not present.
  5. Update or correct the article when better evidence, newer guidance or a material factual error becomes available.

Conflicting evidence and uncertainty

When human studies disagree, the article should say so. A single positive trial should not be converted into a universal conclusion. Population, dose, duration, comparator, sample size, risk of bias and clinically meaningful outcomes are considered separately from biological plausibility.

Personal experiments and original measurements

Mike’s Balance sometimes publishes self-experiments, measurements or exploratory analyses. These are most useful when the setup, conditions and raw values are described clearly enough to understand or reproduce. A personal result is labelled as an observation and is not presented as proof that the same effect will occur in other people.

Use of AI and automation

AI and automation may assist with tasks such as organizing literature, drafting or restructuring text, translation, data work and formatting. They are not treated as evidence or as authoritative sources. Named authors and reviewers remain responsible for the published page, and factual claims should be checked against the underlying sources.

Updates and corrections

Health articles may be updated when better evidence, newer guidelines or a factual correction becomes available. When a material factual or sourcing error is found, the preferred approach is to correct the page. If the correction itself is important for readers, the article may explain what changed.

Readers can report a possible error through the contact page.

Affiliate links and conflicts of interest

Some pages may contain affiliate links. Commercial relationships should not determine the conclusion of an evidence review. Affiliate relationships are disclosed in the Affiliate Disclosure.

Medical disclaimer: Mike’s Balance provides educational and research information, not an individual diagnosis or treatment plan. An article cannot account for a reader’s full history, examination, medications or test results. See the full Medical Disclaimer.