Ask Eirik: Can I Write for Darwinian-Medicine.com?

I’ve been getting lots of e-mails lately from people who are interested in writing for Darwinian-Medicine.com. Since this is something I’m regularly contacted about, I thought I’d address it here on the site, so that I can make my position known. As I see it, that’s a win both for me and for the people who are interested in writing for the site. It’s good for me, as it means that I don’t need to craft a new answer to every inquiry I get. Instead I can just send over a link to this post. It’s also good for those who contact me and ask whether they can contribute a guest post, as they can read the response I plan to give in this post, which is going to be longer and more detailed than the one I usually give via e-mail.

With that said, let’s get to the issue at hand. Below is an e-mail I received from a man named Joshua a short while back. It’ll serve as the basis for this edition of Ask Eirik…

Hello Eirik,

My name is Joshua. I came across your post “10 Reasons Why Grains Shouldn’t Be at the Bottom of the Food Pyramid”, really appreciate your efforts you put into your content. Your writing style is extremely appealing and the content is actionable & promising to titles.

Since we both share similar interests, may I ask, do you accept a guest contribution to darwinian-medicine.com? I’ve several ideas in mind. Your site visitors will certainly like them.

Please let me know if you’d be interested in hearing them. I’d be very happy to pass along some ideas.

– Joshua

My answer:

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for getting in touch and for expressing an interest in contributing to Darwinian medicine. I think it’s great that you (as well as all of the other people who’ve contacted me about this) want to get involved and are willing to allocate some of your time to sharing your knowledge with the readers of this site, particularly seeing as Darwinian-Medicine.com is not among the biggest or most trafficked sites on the internet. My impression is that many of the people who want to write for this site are attracted to Darwinian-Medicine.com because they think the content here is of high quality, not because they are looking to satisfy a need for clicks or popularity.

What you should know though, is that I have never published a guest post on the site. Lots of people have contacted me, offering to write an article or two (One person even offered to pay me if I published a piece he’d written), but I’ve always respectfully declined.

I’m not completely opposed to the idea of bringing guest writers onto the site; however, I would only consider publishing something that is of high quality and that I feel fits the site. Also, seeing as this is a site about evolutionary health and nutrition, I would only accept articles written by evolutionary thinkers (i.e., people who approach the topics and issues they think and write about from an evolutionary starting point).

A lot of the people who’ve contacted me and asked if they could write for the site don’t fit these criteria. A few even appear to have little or no knowledge about what the site is about and what I stand for. I particularly remember getting an e-mail from a guy who wanted to loudly promote the use of whey protein supplements on Darwinian-Medicine.com. He clearly hadn’t read any of the articles in which I talk about the adverse effects of whey protein supplementation. That would have been fine, if it weren’t for the fact that one of those articles was featured on the top of the front page of the site at the time when I received the e-mail.

All of this is to say that I won’t accept articles from someone who wishes to express a message that clearly conflicts with what I believe in. One certainly doesn’t have to agree with me on everything in order to be considered as a guest writer; however, I would never publish something from someone whose health & fitness philosophy is completely at odds with my own.

It’s not an absolute requirement that the person in question has an academic degree or a background in science. The most important thing is simply that I like his writing and that he’s knowledgeable about what he writes about. That said, I would be more inclined to accept something from someone who has been trained in the scientific method and can document that he has basic knowledge about natural sciences than from someone who doesn’t fit these criteria.

All of this is to say that although I’ve yet to put up an article written by someone other than myself here on the site, I’m not completely opposed to doing so. If I’m approached by someone whose writing I really like, I would consider bringing him on as a guest writer. What you should do if you want to be considered as a guest writer is to send me links to some of the articles or scientific papers you’ve written in the past and/or a word document that contains something you’ve written. Also, you would have to send me some information about yourself, such as your age, occupation, and educational background. Even if I like what I see, I can’t promise that I’ll bring you on as a guest writer; however, I’ll consider it.

I hope you find this to be a satisfactory answer!

Again, thanks for getting in touch and for expressing an interest in contributing to the site.

– Eirik