Editorial standards

melanocortin.com is an open, educational reference on the melanocortin system — the POMC-derived peptides, the MC1R–MC5R receptors, and the therapeutics that target them. It is written to serve three audiences on the same pages: students and researchers who need mechanism and citations; clinicians and curious readers who want an accurate plain-language picture; and anyone arriving from a search engine who deserves a credible answer rather than a content farm.

Because much of this material is health-related, the standard we hold ourselves to is higher than "sounds right." Every substantive claim should be traceable to a primary source, uncertainty should be stated rather than hidden, and the writing should never sell you anything. This page explains how we try to live up to that.

Who writes and edits this

Pages are researched, written, and maintained by the melanocortin.com editorial team. We write from the primary literature and regulatory documents — not by paraphrasing other secondary sites — and we do not use invented credentials or fictional "medical reviewers" to borrow authority we haven't earned.

We are formalising named authorship and independent expert review. Until a qualified reviewer has actually signed off on a page, that page is dated"Last updated," not "Last reviewed" — the two are different claims, and we will not blur them. When named, credentialed review is in place, it will appear on the page and be described here.

How we source claims

Claims of fact link to a shared, citeable source registry so you can check the original rather than take our word for it. In rough order of preference, we rely on:

• Peer-reviewed primary literature and authoritative reviews— accessed through PubMed / PMC, and cited with PMIDs or DOIs.
• Regulatory documents — FDA approvals and prescribing information (via DailyMed), and equivalent agency records, for anything about what a drug is approved to do.
• Primary company disclosures — trial results and filings, used carefully and labelled as the interested-party sources they are.

We prefer the strongest available evidence, name the source in the text where it matters, and treat press releases and marketing as claims to verify, not facts to repeat.

How pages are reviewed and kept current

• Every page carries a visible byline and a dated last-update.
• Therapeutic and clinical-pipeline information dates quickly, so it is verified against current primary sources before publication and revisited as the field moves.
• Dates are shown to the year. We would rather commit to an honest "reviewed this year" than imply a false-precision timestamp we can't stand behind.
• Where the science is uncertain, contested, or genuinely unknown, the page says so — plainly — rather than papering over it.

Independence and funding

melanocortin.com is editorially independent. It is not sponsored by, and does not take payment from, any pharmaceutical company, compounder, or vendor to cover, favour, downplay, or omit a drug or product. What appears here is driven by what is scientifically and practically true, not by who might pay for coverage.

If the site ever introduces affiliate links or other commercial relationships, they will be clearly disclosed on the pages where they appear, they will not influence what we say about a product, and they will never turn an educational page into a sales pitch. Our bias is stated up front and it is a simple one: toward the reader.

Not medical advice

Content is for education and general information only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and it is no substitute for a qualified clinician. We do not provide dosing, sourcing, or usage instructions for any drug, approved or otherwise. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay seeking it, because of something you read here.

Corrections

Found an error or an out-of-date claim? Corrections are welcome and credited. The fastest way to reach us is toopen an issue on GitHub, where changes are tracked in the open. We treat a well-sourced correction as a gift, not a nuisance — flagging a mistake makes the reference better for everyone who reads it next.

Licensing

Site content — text and diagrams — is published underCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). The source code is released under the MIT license. Reuse it; just credit the source.