Privacy, terms, disclaimer and ethics

Information we collect

Email address. If you subscribe to the dispatch, we store the address you entered and the date you entered it. We do not ask for your name, and we do not require one.

Correspondence. If you write to one of our addresses, we keep the message so that we can answer it and, in the case of corrections, so that there is a record of what was raised and when.

Server logs. Our web host records standard request information: IP address, timestamp, requested page, referring page and browser user agent. This is ordinary web server operation and is used for security and for diagnosing faults.

Cookies and analytics

We do not set advertising or tracking cookies. We use one privacy-respecting analytics tool, which counts page views in aggregate, does not set a persistent identifier, does not build a profile of you, and does not follow you to any other website. It tells us how many people read a piece and roughly where in the world they were. It does not tell us who they are.

Because we do not track you across sites and set no advertising cookies, there is no consent banner on this site. If your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, it changes nothing here, because we were not doing the thing it asks us to stop doing.

How we use information

Email addresses are used to send the dispatch and nothing else. We do not send promotional messages, because we have nothing to promote. Correspondence is used to answer correspondence. Aggregate analytics are used to decide what to write more of. Server logs are used to keep the site up and to investigate abuse.

What we do not do

We do not sell, rent, license or trade personal data. We do not share our subscriber list with anyone. We do not work with data brokers. We do not run advertising networks, retargeting pixels, social media tracking pixels or any form of behavioural profiling. We do not attempt to identify individual readers, and we do not link analytics data to email addresses.

Third-party services

Three third parties touch this site in the ordinary course of operating it: a web host, which stores the site and its server logs; an email delivery service, which holds subscriber addresses in order to send the dispatch; and the analytics provider described above. Each is bound by its own contractual and legal obligations, and none is permitted to use data from this site for its own purposes. Fonts are served from this site rather than from a third-party font service, specifically so that reading a page here does not send a request to anyone else.

Data retention

Subscriber addresses are kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them, and are removed from the delivery service within thirty days of either. Correspondence is kept for two years, except correction correspondence, which we keep indefinitely as part of the published record of a piece. Server logs are retained by our host for a rolling period of no more than ninety days.

Your rights

You may ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You may unsubscribe at any time using the link at the foot of every dispatch, which works immediately and does not ask you why. Depending on where you live you may also have rights to data portability and to object to particular processing.

To exercise any of these, write to hello@littermate.review. We will respond within thirty days. Because the only identifier we hold is an email address, a request sent from that address is normally all the verification we need or can meaningfully perform.

Children's privacy

This site is written for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under sixteen. If you believe a child has subscribed, write to hello@littermate.review and we will remove the address.

International readers

We publish from the United States and our host and email provider store data there. If you are reading from the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or another jurisdiction with its own data protection regime, your information will be processed in the United States, and by subscribing you accept that transfer. The rights described above are extended to every reader regardless of where they live, because maintaining two standards would be more work than maintaining one.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, the date at the top of this page changes and the dispatch carries a note describing what changed. We will not quietly broaden what we collect. Continued use of the site after a change means the revised policy applies.

Contact

Privacy questions go to hello@littermate.review, or by post to LITTERMATE, 62 Chestnut Wharf, Studio 4, Providence, RI 02903, United States.

Acceptable use

Read the site, quote it, link to it, argue with it. Do not attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of it or to the systems it runs on. Do not scrape it at a rate that degrades service for other readers. Do not use it to distribute malware, to harass anyone, or in a way that breaks the law where you are.

Intellectual property and republication

Text and original graphics on this site are copyright LITTERMATE unless stated otherwise. Photographs are used under the licences named in their captions and remain the property of their photographers; those licences travel with the images and are not ours to extend.

You may quote up to four hundred words of any piece for commentary, criticism, teaching or reporting, with attribution to LITTERMATE and a link to the original. You may not republish a piece in full, in any medium, without written permission. You may not use our text to train a commercial machine learning model. You may not reproduce anything from this site in material that advertises, sells or promotes any product, supplement or compound, and permission for that use will not be granted. Requests go to editors@littermate.review.

User submissions

This site has no comments, no forum and no user accounts. The only material readers send us is correspondence: pitches, correction requests and letters. By sending us a pitch you confirm the work is yours and that you have disclosed any commercial interest in the subject. By sending us a correction request or a letter you allow us to quote from it in a published correction or response, anonymously unless you tell us otherwise. We do not treat unsolicited correspondence as confidential, and we cannot pay for material we did not commission.

No warranty

This site is provided as is. We make no warranty that it will be available, error-free, or up to date. The scientific literature changes and our summaries of it can fall behind. We describe published research to the best of our understanding at the time of writing, and we do not warrant that any description here is complete or that any cited body of work is correctly characterised.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, LITTERMATE, its editors and its contributors are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or punitive loss arising from use of this site or reliance on anything published here, including any decision taken about any substance. Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify LITTERMATE and its contributors against any claim arising from your misuse of this site or from your breach of these terms, including reasonable legal costs.

Severability

If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable, that provision is severed and the remainder continues in force.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Rhode Island, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any dispute arising from them is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts sitting in Providence County, Rhode Island.

Changes to these terms

We may revise these terms. The revision date at the top of this page will change when we do, and continued use of the site after that date constitutes acceptance.

Sourcing standards

We work from primary published research wherever possible. When we describe a body of work rather than a specific paper, we say so in those words rather than attaching a reference that implies more precision than we have. We do not fabricate citations, we do not repeat a citation we have only seen quoted somewhere else, and we do not cite a review as though it were the study it reviews. Where a claim rests on a single paper, the piece says that it rests on a single paper.

Conflicts of interest

No editor or contributor may hold a financial interest in any company that manufactures, distributes, compounds or sells any compound covered here, or accept payment, product, travel or hospitality from one. Contributors disclose relevant prior employment and research funding before commissioning, and any disclosure that bears on a piece is published with it. We do not commission anyone whose income depends on the subject looking promising.

No advertising or sponsored content

This site carries no advertising and never has. We accept no sponsorship, publish no sponsored or paid content, hold no affiliate arrangements, and place nothing in the Library in exchange for anything. There is no commercial arrangement anywhere on this site, so there is no such thing as a disclosed one.

How corrections work

A factual error is corrected by appending a dated, signed correction to the foot of the piece, with the original wording left visible above it. We do not silently amend published text and we do not unpublish a piece to make an error disappear. Typographical fixes that do not change meaning are made without a note. Anything that changes what a piece claims gets a note.

To request a correction, write to corrections@littermate.review with the sentence at issue and what is wrong with it. We reply within five working days, including when we decline, and we say why we declined. Library profiles carry a last-reviewed date, and a substantive change to a profile is noted in the next dispatch.