Who writes and reviews this

Medical Reviewers

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.

What a byline means here

An author byline means that person wrote or substantively edited the page. A reviewer byline means a named clinician read that specific page and checked its clinical statements against their cited sources.

Neither appears sitewide by default. A byline that attaches automatically to every page is a design element rather than an attribution, and it is how most publications in this category present authorship.

What a reviewer actually does

Opens the cited paper and confirms our sentence says what that paper says. Confirms which analysis produced any quoted figure. Checks that limitation sections survived editing, since those are what get cut when a draft runs long. And checks that no sentence reads as advice for an individual reader — no dose, no eligibility verdict, no “you should”.

Credential verification status

An NPI number establishes identity in the national NPPES registry. It is not evidence of current state licensure, board certification or credentialing — those are separate records held by separate bodies.

Where we have not completed those checks, no medically-reviewed byline publishes and no review date is emitted. Every byline on such a page reads “medically reviewed: not yet” and links to an explanation. That is the correct holding position, and it is uncomfortable to publish, which is why almost nobody does.