Editorial policy

PCOS, now also called PMOS, is a field with a great deal of confident writing and much less good evidence. This page sets out the rules we hold ourselves to, so that you can check whether we kept them.

Every claim names its source

A link is not a citation. Where we say something about the body, we name the study or the guideline, say what it actually found, and link it, with a PubMed identifier where one exists. You should never have to take our word for it, and you should always be able to go and read the thing we read.

How we weigh evidence

• Strongest: clinical guidelines from bodies such as the international PCOS guideline groups, and systematic reviews of randomised trials.
• Useful: individual randomised trials, and large observational studies where a trial would not be possible.
• Weak, and labelled as weak: small studies, short studies, studies in a population unlike the reader, and anything not yet replicated.
• Not evidence: a mechanism that sounds plausible, a practitioner's opinion, a supplement company's own research, and anything we read on social media.

When the honest answer is that nobody knows, we write that nobody knows. A page that admits its limits is more useful than one that rounds a maybe up to a yes.

What we do not write about

We keep to what we can source well and what the app is actually for. That means we do not publish on conception or pregnancy, we do not recommend supplements, and we do not tell anyone what to weigh. Those questions belong with your clinician, and there are better sources for them than us.

We also do not describe what a meal does inside your blood, because we do not measure your blood and anything we said about it would be a guess dressed up as a reading. What we can talk about honestly is what was on the plate, and what you told us happened afterwards.

Dates you can see

Every post carries the day it was published and the day it was last reviewed, in the page itself and not only in its structured data. A review means someone read the piece again against its sources on that date. If a piece has not been reviewed for a long time, you can see that too, which is the point.

Who writes this, and who has reviewed it

Everything here is written under the Damson name by the people who build the app. Nobody writing here is a doctor or a dietitian, and this site never pretends otherwise.

Where a page has been read by a registered dietitian, that person is named on that page with the date they read it. Where it has not, no reviewer is named and none is implied. We would rather have a small number of honestly reviewed pages than a site-wide badge that means nothing.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it on the page and say what changed and when, rather than editing quietly. Tell us at [email protected], quoting the sentence, and we will either correct it or explain why we think it stands.

Who pays for this

Damson is an independent, paid app, made by its author. This site exists to tell people about it. There are no advertisements, no affiliate links, no sponsored posts, and no money from supplement or clinic brands. When we compare Damson with another app we say plainly that it is ours, and we do not misrepresent theirs.

How the app itself is held to this

The same rules apply inside Damson. Claims it makes carry citations you can open, estimates are labelled as estimates, and where it is uncertain it says so instead of guessing confidently.