Standards
Sources
Every clinical claim on this site traces back to a source we can name. This is what counts as a source, how each one is verified, and what happens when we cannot confirm it.
What we cite
- Standard textbooks at a named edition, with the chapter the claim comes from.
- Clinical practice guidelines from the issuing body, at the report year cited.
- Peer reviewed journal articles where a claim depends on specific published evidence.
Where sources disagree, the page says so rather than picking the tidier answer. Where a guideline has been revised, the page cites the revision it was written against.
How a source is registered
Sources live in a single registry, separate from the pages that cite them. A page references a source by an identifier. It never writes a URL, a DOI, a journal name or an edition number in its own text. That separation means one source is described once, in one place, and every page citing it stays consistent when that description is corrected.
Verification, and what happens when it fails
A source is not registered until its edition, year and location have been confirmed against the publisher or the issuing body. Until then it carries no URL and no year, and the registry stays deliberately empty rather than filling in a plausible value.
An unverifiable citation is deleted, never guessed. A reference that looks real and is not is worse than one fewer reference, because a reader may go looking for it, may cite it onward, and has no way to know it was invented. If we cannot confirm it, the row comes out of the page.
What we do not cite
- Question banks, commercial review courses and other study sites.
- Real or recalled examination items from any board.
- Anonymous summaries, lecture slides and secondhand notes.
- Any medical code, DOI or identifier we have not confirmed at the source.
Reading the reference list
Each clinical page carries a numbered reference list at the end. A linked title means we confirmed a stable public page for that source. An unlinked title means the source is real and confirmed but has no stable public URL we are willing to point you at, which is common for print textbooks. Either way the edition and year are there so you can find the copy you have.
Found a source that does not support the claim
That is the single most useful correction you can send us. Tell us the page, the claim and what the source actually says, through the corrections page.