Terms of Use

1. Agreeing to these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and BioGrove (“we”, “us”) about using the BioGrove website at biogrove.org, its app and its community features. By using BioGrove you agree to them, together with our Privacy Policy and the community rules below. If you don’t agree, please don’t use BioGrove.

2. Who can use BioGrove

• You must be 13 or older to use BioGrove and to join the community.
• If you’re under 18, you need a parent’s or guardian’s permission, and they agree to these terms for you.
• You can’t use BioGrove if the law where you live forbids it, or if we’ve suspended or removed you, unless we tell you otherwise.
• Each account is for one person. Don’t share, sell or transfer it, and don’t use extra accounts to get around a suspension or a limit.

3. What BioGrove is, and isn’t

• Study help, not medical advice. Nothing on BioGrove is medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and it doesn’t replace a doctor, your coursework or official exam preparation. Don’t use it to make decisions about anyone’s health. In an emergency, call 911. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
• Independent. BioGrove isn’t affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), Harvard University, or the publishers and researchers whose work it summarizes. MCAT® is a registered trademark of the AAMC. USMLE® is a registered trademark of the FSMB and NBME.
• No promises about exams. XP, ranks, badges and scores are there to keep you motivated. They don’t predict how you’ll do on any exam.
• Accuracy. We work to keep questions, explanations and summaries accurate, but mistakes can slip through, and summaries simplify the research. Check anything important against your textbooks and the original sources, and please tell us when you spot an error.
• Free, and may change. BioGrove is free. We may add, change or remove features, and the site may sometimes be unavailable.

4. Your account

• Joining is optional. You sign in with a Google account, and Google’s terms apply to that account.
• Answer the age question truthfully.
• You’re responsible for what happens through your account. Keep your Google account secure, and tell us right away if you think someone else is using your BioGrove account.
• You can delete your account at any time from the profile menu.

5. Community rules

Discussions are for talking about science with other people who love it. To keep them a good place:

• Be kind. Argue with ideas, not people. No harassment, bullying, threats or hate based on who someone is.
• No medical advice. Don’t ask about your own symptoms or tell anyone how to treat theirs. That’s a conversation for a doctor. Never encourage anyone to harm themselves or others.
• Keep it about science. Say where a claim comes from when you can, and say so when you’re guessing. Don’t knowingly spread false or misleading health information.
• Protect privacy. Never post a phone number, address, school or anyone’s personal details, including your own.
• No spam, ads, scams or sexual content, and no links to malware or to sites made to deceive people.
• Be yourself. Don’t pretend to be another person or organization, or claim credentials you don’t have.
• Respect the law and other people’s rights. Don’t post anything illegal, or anything you don’t have the right to share, such as other people’s copyrighted work.
• Use reports honestly. Report posts that break these rules. Don’t use reports to silence people you simply disagree with.

The same rules are in the fine print on the site, under “Community rules”.

6. What you post

• It’s yours. You keep ownership of your comments and profile.
• You let BioGrove show it. By posting, you give BioGrove a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, display, copy, format and distribute what you post, only as needed to run BioGrove and its app. This permission ends when you delete the post or your account, apart from backup copies, which are overwritten in time.
• It’s public. Anyone can read your profile and comments, and people may quote or copy them in ways we can’t control. Don’t post anything you want to keep private.
• You’re responsible for it. You confirm you have the right to post it and that it follows these terms. BioGrove doesn’t check posts before they appear and isn’t responsible for what members write.

7. Moderation

• Moderators may hide or remove any post, and may suspend or close any account that breaks these terms, puts others at risk, or exposes BioGrove to legal trouble. We may do this without notice, though we’ll usually say why.
• A comment that several established members report hides itself until a moderator reviews it.
• We don’t have to monitor everything, and not removing something doesn’t mean we approve of it.
• If you think we got a decision wrong, email us and we’ll take another look.

8. Using the site fairly

Please don’t:

• copy BioGrove’s questions, explanations or summaries in bulk, scrape the site, or use bots or automated tools to use it, post or report;
• use BioGrove’s content to build a competing product, or to train an AI model, without our written permission;
• try to get around posting limits, suspensions or security measures, or reach anyone else’s account or information;
• overload the site, interfere with how it works, or upload anything harmful;
• use BioGrove to advertise or to sell anything without our permission.

Security research done in good faith is welcome. If you find a vulnerability, email us before telling anyone else, don’t access or change other people’s information, and give us a reasonable time to fix it.

9. BioGrove’s content

• The practice questions, explanations, story summaries, drawings, icons, logo and design were made for BioGrove and belong to BioGrove. You’re welcome to use them for your own personal, non-commercial study and to share links to any page. Please don’t republish, sell or redistribute them without permission.
• Some material belongs to others and is used under its own license or with credit: photos (credited in the fine print, under their licenses), the original research and news reports that stories link to, YouTube videos, and Harvard’s headlines in “Latest from Harvard”. Their owners’ rights and licenses apply.
• “BioGrove” and the BioGrove logo are BioGrove’s. Other names and trademarks belong to their owners.

10. Copyright complaints

We respect copyright and respond to clear notices under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you believe something on BioGrove infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with “Copyright notice” in the subject line, and include:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. the copyrighted work you believe is infringed;
3. the material you want removed, with its web address or enough detail for us to find it;
4. your name, postal address, phone number and email address;
5. a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
6. a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or are authorized to act for the owner.

If we remove something you posted because of a notice, we’ll try to let you know. If you believe it was removed by mistake, you can send a counter-notice with your signature, the material and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification, your name, address and phone number, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your address (or, outside the U.S., any judicial district where BioGrove may be found). We may pass a counter-notice to the person who complained. We close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe copyright.

Sending a false notice or counter-notice on purpose can make you legally responsible for the harm it causes.

11. Feedback

We love hearing ideas and corrections. If you send us suggestions, we may use them freely, without owing you anything.

12. Other sites and services

BioGrove links to other websites and uses services run by others, such as Google Sign-In and YouTube. We don’t control them and aren’t responsible for their content or practices, and their own terms and privacy policies apply. Watching an embedded video is covered by YouTube’s terms of service.

13. Changes

We may update these terms as BioGrove changes. When we do, we’ll change the date at the top. For a significant change, we’ll also put a notice on the site before it takes effect. If you keep using BioGrove after a change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you don’t accept them, stop using BioGrove and delete your account.

14. Ending your use

You can stop using BioGrove and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms, if we’re required to by law, or if we stop running BioGrove or part of it. Sections 6 (for content still on the site), 9, 10 and 15 to 19 continue to apply after your use ends.

15. Disclaimers

BioGrove is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no promises or warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including that BioGrove will be accurate, complete, up to date, uninterrupted, secure or free of errors, or that it’s fit for any particular purpose. You use BioGrove, and decide what to do with what you learn on it, at your own risk.

16. Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, BioGrove and the people who run it won’t be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, opportunity or goodwill, arising from your use of BioGrove or your inability to use it, or from anything other members post. In any case, our total liability for any claim about BioGrove is limited to fifty U.S. dollars (US$50).

Some places don’t allow certain warranties or damages to be excluded or limited. Where that’s the case, these limits apply only as far as the law allows, and nothing here limits rights you have that can’t be waived.

17. Responsibility for your actions

To the extent the law allows, if someone brings a claim against BioGrove because of something you posted or because you broke these terms or the law, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and losses that result, including reasonable legal fees.

18. If we disagree

If you have a problem with BioGrove, please email us first. Most concerns can be sorted out quickly that way, and we’ll try in good faith to resolve yours within 60 days of hearing from you.

19. The fine details

• These terms, the Privacy Policy and the community rules are the whole agreement between you and BioGrove about using it.
• If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce part of these terms right away, we can still enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer your rights under these terms to anyone else. We may transfer ours if BioGrove changes hands.
• Headings are only there to make the terms easier to read.

20. Contact

Questions about these terms, appeals, copyright notices and security reports: [email protected].