Welcoming a New Blogger to SBM

Why This Welcome Matters (and Why We’re a Little Picky)

Science-Based Medicine (SBM) has spent years examining medical claims with a skeptical eye and a love of data. Founded in 2008 and led by physicians and scientists, SBM’s core mission is to evaluate health topics through the lens of scientific evidence while countering medical misinformation. It’s an evidence-first newsroom-meets-blog, where editors like Steven Novella, MD, and David Gorski, MD, PhD, sharpen arguments with clinical experience and a relentless commitment to methodological rigor.

Welcoming a new blogger here isn’t just adding another byline. It’s inviting a colleague into a community that insists on transparency, accurate sourcing, and writing that’s both readable and rigorous. The internet is awash in health claims; the U.S. Surgeon General has even described health misinformation as a serious threat to public health, calling for a whole-of-society response. That’s the backdrop for today’s welcome.

What “Science-Based” Means at SBM

Start with the Evidence Pyramid, Not the Hype

Evidence isn’t a monolith; some evidence is sturdier than others. Systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials carry more weight than anecdotes or expert opinion because they’re designed to minimize bias. That hierarchy isn’t academic nitpickingit’s the bedrock of how we estimate what really works in medicine.

Our new blogger will be expected to use this hierarchy in practice: lean on systematic reviews (Cochrane, where possible), give proper context when citing single studies, and explain uncertainty plainly. Cochrane’s own guidance emphasizes clear, plain-language summaries of medical evidence so non-experts can make sense of it without a statistics degree. We expect the same clarity here.

Plain Language, Zero Hand-Waving

Readers deserve writing that is interesting and accurate, not dense or evasive. Cochrane’s style guidance and many health-writing frameworks agree: structure your argument, minimize jargon, and state what the evidence canand can’ttell us. We encourage humor (carefully applied), but never as a substitute for facts.

Show Your Work (and Your Disclosures)

Transparency isn’t optional. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) sets the standard for disclosing relationships and activities that might bias interpretation. Even in a blog format, the principle holds: say where information comes from and disclose anything that could influence your conclusions.

Beyond academic conflicts, U.S. consumer-protection rules matter too. The Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides require clear disclosure of material connectionsfree products, travel, fundingif they could sway readers’ trust. If we review a device, book, or app and there’s support in kind or cash, we’ll say so, in plain English.

The SBM House Style: Critical, Curious, and Conversational

Our editorial style balances high standards with human voices. We welcome personalityquips, metaphors, and the occasional science punso long as the data do the heavy lifting. New posts should pose a clear question, walk through the best-available evidence, explain key caveats, and finish with pragmatic takeaways. That approach reflects SBM’s longstanding guidelines: scientific rigor + engaging writing = reader trust.

Topics range from sorting out weak clinical claims to unpacking major policy shifts. Whether debunking homeopathy’s magical thinking or analyzing physician-led misinformation during COVID-19, the method is the same: follow the evidence, cite it clearly, and let readers see how the conclusions were reached.

SBM’s North Star: Fighting Misinformation, Building Trust

Health misinformation spreads fastoften faster than corrections. That’s why our articles emphasize what the totality of evidence shows and why uncertainty is not a flaw but a feature of honest science communication. The Surgeon General’s advisory outlines concrete steps: platform accountability, media literacy, and evidence-based messaging. Our new blogger will join that effort, piece by piece, post by post.

This isn’t just a reaction to the pandemic era. SBM has critiqued pseudoscience and poor reporting since its first “Hello, world” post in 2008, and it continues to challenge misleading narrativesbe they about vaccines, supplements, or miracle cureswith careful sourcing and context.

How We Judge Claims (and Why Some Don’t Survive)

Biological Plausibility + High-Quality Studies

To clear the SBM bar, a claim should make biological sense and be supported by reliable clinical evidence. For example, homeopathy stumbles on both counts: dilutions beyond Avogadro’s number offer no plausible mechanism, and systematic reviews have repeatedly failed to find convincing clinical benefit. Our new blogger will be expected to explain both the mechanistic and clinical angles when weighing any intervention.

When Studies Go Sideways: Corrections and Retractions

Science self-correctsbut only if we surface errors. COPE and ICMJE outline how journals should handle corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions; Retraction Watch and others track the process. We expect authors to update posts when key underlying studies are corrected or retracted, and to explain what the change means for readers.

What Readers Can Expect from Our New Blogger

• Clear questions and straight answers: Each post will be framed around a testable claim or decision point (e.g., “Does this supplement reduce time-to-recovery?”) and conclude with what the weight of evidence suggestsand what remains unknown.
• Accessible explanations: Expect short definitions of key terms (absolute vs. relative risk, confidence intervals, surrogate endpoints) and why they matter to real-world decisions.
• Ethical transparency: Disclosures of potential conflicts, plus plain-English notes on funding or material connections when applicable.
• Methodological humility: Single studies will be contextualized; null results and limitations will not be buried. If the best answer is “it depends,” we’ll say soand explain on what.

Behind the Curtain: Editorial Mentorship & Process

Our editors don’t just redline prose; they coach thinking. Expect feedback about study design, risk of bias, confounding, and effect sizes; questions about reproducibility; and nudges toward better analogies for lay readers. The goal is not to “win” debates but to build the habit of interrogating claims, a hallmark of SBM since its founding.

We also prod authors to consider audience needs. The CDC and NIH offer practical checklists for evaluating online health informationquestions about authorship, review processes, and sources that we want our readers to be able to answer after reading any SBM piece.

From Clicks to Clarity: Writing for a Digital Audience

People skim. Teens are online nearly constantly, and adults often get health answers from feeds before physicians. We don’t write for the algorithm, but we do respect the scroll: tight subheads, informative lead paragraphs, and crisp summaries help readers absorb complex evidence without losing the thread.

AI is increasingly used to research health topics; readers may arrive with AI-synthesized snippets or misconceptions. That’s more reason to show the work, link the logic, and keep our explanations clear and verifiable.

Welcome Aboard!

To our newest blogger: You’re joining a spirited conversation with readers who ask tough questions, clinicians who notice nuance, and skeptics who fact-check footnotes for sport. Your job isn’t to be loudit’s to be lucid. Bring the curiosity. Bring the rigor. Bring the jokes (tastefully). Above all, bring the evidence.

Conclusion

Welcoming a new voice to SBM is a commitmentto better explanations, stronger sourcing, and patient-centered takeaways grounded in the best available evidence. When medical myths spread easily and corrections travel at half-speed, we double down on transparency, context, and humility. We’re thrilled to have another teammate dedicated to that mission.

sapo: Science-Based Medicine welcomes a new blogger to a community that pairs clinical insight with rigorous evidence appraisal. In this introduction, we outline our standardshierarchies of evidence, plain-language summaries, transparency rules, and anti-misinformation tacticsso readers know what to expect: clear questions, honest answers, and practical takeaways.

of Hands-On Experience: What It’s Like to Join SBM

Onboarding at SBM feels a bit like entering a lab where the Bunsen burners are replaced with browser tabs and every reagent is a PDF. Your first week, an editor asks you to pick a topic that’s hot enough to matter but stable enough to studysay, a supplement trending on social media or a new preprint everyone is quoting without reading past the abstract. You sketch a plan: define the clinical question, find the highest-quality evidence, and triangulate with plausible mechanisms. Then the mentoring starts.

The comments come fast and friendly. “Nice overviewnow, what’s the absolute risk reduction?” “Can you separate surrogate endpoints from clinical endpoints?” “This animal study is interesting; does any human evidence exist?” It’s not gatekeeping; it’s guardrails. Your draft shrinks as you cut fluff and add context. You learn to state certainty the way a good clinician does in the exam room: plainly, with empathy, and without false precision.

You’ll also learn the subtle art of writing for readers who arrive at different speeds. Some are clinicians on coffee breaks; they want the gist in three paragraphs. Others are method geeks who read forest plots for fun; they want links to protocols, bias assessments, and sensitivity analyses. Striking that balancewithout talking down to anyoneis where SBM’s voice lives. You’ll find that a single well-chosen analogy (“Think of relative risk like a zoomed-in crop of the same picture; absolute risk is the full frame”) can save a dozen lines of statistics.

Another early lesson: disclose early and often. Did you receive a review copy of a book or device? Say so. Did you consult for a relevant nonprofit two years ago? Note it. Transparency isn’t performative here; it’s practical. Readers extend trust when we hand them everything they need to weigh our words. It’s the same logic behind citing systematic reviews before splashy single studies, and behind updating a post if a key trial gets corrected or retracted. The humility to revise is a feature, not a bug.

Finally, the culture: skeptical, yes, but never cynical about patients. SBM is at its best when it remembers why people click on health stories in the first placethey’re worried, curious, hopeful. They want to know whether the new thing will help, harm, or waste time and money. Your task is to honor that hope with clarity. If the answer is “probably not,” explain why with respect. If the answer is “we don’t know yet,” show the path to finding out. And when the answer is “yes, with caveats,” make those caveats crisp enough to tape to a fridge. That’s the craft you’ll practice hereone careful paragraph at a time.