Core & Trust

Conflicts of Interest Policy

Every relationship that could bias a page

Nobody on the editorial team holds a financial interest in a company covered here, accepts payment from a provider, or works for one. If that ever changes, the relationship is disclosed on every affected page and the person is removed from the affected coverage.

What this policy covers

How we apply it

How to hold us to it

Suspended reviewer credit — declared conflict of interest

RxPepsDirect is a telehealth service that sells compounded tirzepatide. Its published comparison of compounded tirzepatide telehealth services — in which it ranks itself the cheapest option — carries the byline “Medically reviewed by Dr. Jonathan Snipes, MD and Kim Callender, NP, FNP-BC”, names Dr Snipes as its medical director under NPI 1821250077, and lists both as its prescribers.

NPI 1821250077 is the identifier we had recorded against our own named medical reviewer. An NPI is a unique national identifier, so this is an identity match rather than a name coincidence.

What that means

Our conflicts policy states that no clinician reviews a page about a company they work for, consult to, or hold an interest in. Both named reviewers hold a role at a company selling in the exact category this publication reviews, and one of them co-signs that company's competing ranking.

That is precisely the relationship the policy exists to prevent, and we did not catch it. We recorded two NPI numbers and never checked what those clinicians do elsewhere.

What we have done

1. Suspended the reviewer credit sitewide. The reviewedBy property has been removed from the structured data of every page that carried it — 526 pages.
2. Published the finding as COR-006 with the source and the date.
3. Left the underlying position unchanged: this site has never emitted a dateReviewed and every byline has always read “medically reviewed: not yet”, because we had not verified state licensure. No page has ever published a medically-reviewed claim under either name.

That last point is the only reason this is a disclosure rather than a retraction.

What has not been established

We have not spoken to either clinician. A clinician may hold roles at more than one organisation lawfully and without impropriety, and being a prescriber for a telehealth service is ordinary work. What is not compatible with our policy is that person also carrying a reviewer credit here while doing so.

Both individuals have a right of response, and anything they provide will be published alongside this.

Why this is on the site rather than quietly fixed

A conflicts policy that has never caught anything is decoration. This one caught something that costs us the one credentialed byline we had, and publishing it is the only version of the policy that means anything.