Methodology

The hard part of this product is the rubric, so we publish it. Every grade, gap, hype position, and safety call on the site is produced by the rules below — and is reachable from the claim it produced.

Evidence grades

Grades describe the strength of the evidence, on an A–D scale:

Certainty is shown separately from the grade — a claim can be a confident read of weak evidence, or a tentative read of a larger literature. We never collapse the two.

Claim states (including the honest absences)

• well-supported / mixed / weak — graded effect claims.
• studied, no effect (null-result) — tested and found not to work. This is a finding, and it is gradeless.
• not well studied (untested) — there isn't adequate evidence yet. Also gradeless. It is distinct from null-result, and we never blur them.

We do not fabricate to fill a gap. When we don't know, the answer says so explicitly rather than inventing a claim.

The belief-vs-evidence gap

For every popular belief we compute its distance from the evidence as a direction and an ordinal magnitude — never a fake decimal.

• belief-ahead — the claim runs ahead of the evidence (hype).
• belief-behind — the evidence is stronger than people assume (under-appreciated).
• belief-contradicts — the evidence tested it and found it null or opposite (a myth).
• belief-matches — belief and evidence are roughly aligned (settled).

Magnitude (negligible · modest · large · extreme) combines the grade-distance, a penalty when the evidence state is unflattering to the assertion, and a penalty when the claim is marketing or mechanistic speculation. Direction is high-confidence; magnitude is coarse and honest about being coarse. A belief never inherits the evidence's grade.

Hype-cycle position

Position is derived from two trajectories — attention momentum and the evidence-grade trajectory — not assigned by feel. Possible positions: emerging → surging → evidence-catching-up → settled → declining → debunked. A position only moves when the condition holds across windows or a shock forces re-evaluation, and debunked requires a confirming evidence decline, not merely falling attention.

Safety severity

Safety always comes first in the answer. Interactions are tiered:

People say · Law permits · Evidence shows

We keep three things visibly separate and never let one masquerade as another:

• People say — a popular belief, scored for its distance from the evidence (the gap above).
• The law permits — what a label may legally claim. Under regimes like US DSHEA, a supplement label can carry a structure/function claim (e.g. “supports immune health”) that does not have to be proven. A permitted claim is never a truth claim.
• The evidence shows — the graded claim with provenance.

So a product can legally say “supports a healthy immune system” even where the evidence for, say, preventing colds is a null-result. We surface the legal claim and the evidence, side by side, rather than repeating the label as fact.

Sources & authority

Every graded claim carries its sources with the signals that establish authority — authors, venue, year, peer-review status, institution — published in machine-readable form (schema.org) so answer engines can judge and attribute them.

Neutrality, review & governance

• We sell no supplements and take no product money or editorial affiliate revenue. Perceived neutrality is the product.
• Grades, gaps, and safety calls are human-confirmed; automation proposes, qualified reviewers sign off. Nothing auto-publishes.
• The rubric is versioned; re-scoring under a new version is itself a recorded change (see what changed).
• Not medical advice; not a medical device. This is decision-support and education — never diagnosis, prescription, or a substitute for a clinician.