Source Selection Standards

The order of preference

Where sources conflict, the higher tier decides what the article says. Where the highest tier available is low, the article says so rather than borrowing confidence from a lower one.

1. Peer-reviewed primary research. PubMed-indexed original studies, with the design, sample size and model stated. A result in mice is reported as a result in mice.
2. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of that primary research.
3. Registry records. ClinicalTrials.gov and equivalent registries, for what is actually being studied, at what phase, by whom, and whether the trial reported.
4. Regulatory documents. FDA, Health Canada, EMA and TGA filings, reviews, guidance and safety communications.
5. Analytical and pharmacopoeial references for method and specification questions.
6. Named-source reporting from established outlets, for commercial and regulatory events only, never for a scientific claim.

What we do not cite

• Other vendors' marketing. Including their blogs, their comparison tables and their purity claims. A competitor's product page is evidence about their marketing, not about a compound.
• Forums, social posts and anecdotal reports. These are the largest body of writing about most of these compounds and the least reliable. They are not cited as evidence for anything, including for what is commonly believed.
• Predatory and pay-to-publish journals. Indexing in PubMed is necessary but not sufficient; a journal on recognised predatory lists is excluded whatever its indexing says.
• Secondary summaries used in place of the study. Where a press release, a news article or an AI summary is the route to a finding, the underlying paper is read before the claim is written. If the paper cannot be obtained, the claim is not made.
• Our own certificates as evidence about a compound in general. A certificate of analysis is evidence about one lot of one product and is cited only for that.

How strength of evidence is stated

Most of the compounds discussed on this site are not approved therapies anywhere, and most of the published work on them is preclinical. Articles are required to make that visible rather than to write around it:

• The model is named. In vitro, rodent, non-human primate and human findings are never merged into a single claim about what a compound "does".
• Trial phase is stated where a compound is in clinical development, and "in trials" is never written as though it meant "approved". Our trial tracker classifies regulatory stage explicitly, including the difference between not approved, approved outside the United States, and withdrawn.
• Single studies are identified as single studies. A finding that has not been replicated is described as one that has not been replicated.
• Where the literature genuinely disagrees, the disagreement is reported. An article is allowed to end without a conclusion.

Citation practice

Claims are traceable to the source that supports them, not to a bibliography at the foot of the page. Our research pipeline enforces this mechanically: claims carry a verified quotation span from the source document, and a drafting model never sees raw source text, so an article cannot paraphrase a source it did not actually extract a claim from.

Sources are linked to the publisher or registry record rather than to a summary of it, so a reader can check the claim against the document rather than against our description of it.

What this does not make us

None of the above is peer review, and none of it is independent. This site is published by a company that sells research compounds; see the conflict of interest disclosure for what that affects. Content here is for laboratory research and educational purposes and is not medical advice.