Our Medical Review Process
Which pages are reviewed by a physician, who reviews them, against what criteria, and what happens when a review goes out of date.
Pages carrying medical claims are reviewed by a named physician before publication, matched to the subject: a cardiologist for cardiac risk, an addiction specialist for withdrawal and interactions. The reviewer and the date appear on the page. Reviews expire after eighteen months.
Which pages are reviewed
Three sections require review before a page can be published: safety, science and treatment. A page in one of those sections cannot go live without a named reviewer and a review date. The site’s build refuses it.
Sections that carry no medical claim, meaning legality, tradition, experiences, the plant and news, are not medically reviewed. They are edited and sourced like everything else, but a lawyer’s question is not a physician’s, and pretending otherwise would dilute a signal we want to keep meaningful.
Who reviews
Reviewers are matched to the subject rather than assigned in rotation.
| Subject | Reviewed by |
|---|---|
| Cardiac risk, QT prolongation, screening, contraindications | A cardiologist |
| Withdrawal, opioid and psychiatric drug interactions, dosing rationale | A physician in addiction medicine |
| Pharmacology and research state | The reviewer whose field the page falls in |
Reviewers are listed on the contributors page with their credentials. No page is reviewed by its own author.
What a review checks
A review is not a proofread. It asks whether the page would mislead a reader acting on it.
- Is every clinical claim supported by the source cited? Not merely consistent with it, but supported by it.
- Is the strength of the evidence represented honestly? A case series must not read like a trial.
- Are the risks in proportion? On this subject that means: does the page give cardiac risk the weight the literature gives it?
- Are the contraindications and interactions complete for what the page covers?
- Could a reader act on this page in a way that harms them? If yes, the page is changed, whatever it does for traffic.
A reviewer can require changes, and a page does not publish until they are made.
What a review is not
It is not medical advice to you. A reviewer confirms that a page describes the evidence accurately; they have not seen your ECG, your prescriptions or your history, and nothing on this site can substitute for someone who has.
It is not an endorsement of treatment. A physician reviewing a page on ibogaine treatment is confirming that the page describes it correctly, including its dangers. That is not a recommendation.
Expiry
A review is valid for eighteen months.
Past that, the page displays an overdue flag on its byline, visible to the reader. We do not remove the page and we do not hide the date; a reader is better served by an old page that says it is old than by a page whose date implies a currency it does not have.
Pages are also re-reviewed ahead of schedule when a trial reports, when a regulator moves, or when a reader tells us something is wrong.
Reporting an error
If you are a clinician and you think a page here is wrong, we want the correction more than we want the page. Write to corrections@iboga.co. The procedure, and what we do with it, are on the contact page.