Editorial standards

Sources

We work from primary sources: the published paper, the trial registry entry, the regulator’s own document. We cite a review only when we are describing what the review concluded. Press releases, forum posts and supplier marketing are never used as evidence.

Every factual claim gets a numbered citation that links to the reference list at the end of the article. References include a DOI or a direct link wherever one exists.

Evidence labels

Every article, study box and reader report carries one of five evidence labels. The label reflects the strongest evidence the piece rests on, not the strongest evidence that exists anywhere for that peptide.

Numbers

We give the real numbers: how many participants, how long, the result and the comparison. We say when a study had no control group, when it was small, when it was funded by someone with a stake in the result, and when it has not been repeated.

Language

No “miracle”, “game-changer”, “hack” or “breakthrough”. Headlines promise an answer, not a thrill. When the honest answer is “we don’t know yet”, that is what we write, and most articles include a section called What we still don’t know.

Dosing

We report the doses used in studies because they are part of the evidence. We do not tell readers what to take.

Independence from advertisers

Advertisers do not see, suggest or approve editorial content. Ads are placed automatically at fixed positions in an article, labelled “Advertisement”, and styled so they cannot be mistaken for editorial.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and say so at the bottom of the article. See corrections.