The method, in the open
How we grade. And where we're biased.
The method isthe product. If you disagree with how we weighed something, you should be able to see exactly what we weighed. Including our blind spots. Here's all of it.
Four plain questions, never one number
Every compound answers the same four questions. Each keeps its letter or level, with the plain-English read right beside it:
- Does the science back it? Proven in humans, down to animal-only or basically nothing.
- Do real people feel it? Loud and consistent, down to crickets. Anecdote, always labeled as anecdote.
- Is it safe? Clean, down to a hard no.
- Could it be placebo? Not an insult. If you feel better, that's real to you. The point is only to know whether you're paying peptide prices for an expectation.
One letter would hide the only question that matters: proven for what?So we never collapse them. Here's every compound we cover, mapped by the first two questions:
Each dot is a compound. Bottom-left means no real science, higher up means more real-world buzz, and the dot color is the safety grade. Almost everything clusters in the low-science corner. That's the honest picture. Click any dot for its profile.
First, we look for conflict
The first question we ask of any source isn't "is it credible?" It's "who profits if you believe it?"When information and profit line up, we flag it: on the experts we cite, the sellers we reference, and on ourselves. A conflict isn't automatic disqualification. It's context you're owed, so you can weigh the claim with your eyes open. You'll see those flags throughout the authorities and sources we track.
Why we weight the real world
For most of these compounds the human trials barely exist. So we do something a medical journal never would: we deliberately weight real-world evidence more heavily than usual. And we tell you exactly what kind, and exactly what it's worth.
Athletes & bodybuilders. The de-facto trials
For decades, performance enhancement has run years ahead of the science. And it has run through athletes and bodybuilders first. They are, functionally, the closest thing to a large-scale clinical study most of these compounds will ever get. We treat that record as real signal: graded, sourced, never mistaken for gospel.
Direct, hand-to-hand experience
A practitioner who has personally run a compound with dozens of clients knows things no forum thread captures. We weight that first-hand clinical experience. And note where it comes from.
Third-party sellers. Named, not anonymous
Vendors are a conflicted source. They are also where a lot of the real-world batch data and user reports actually live. So we reference them openly. Never anonymously. Flag the conflict plainly, and extract what honest real-world signal we can. Not science. Still worth something.
All of this lands in the "do real people feel it?" lens, and it is always labeled as anecdote. Weighted up because the science is thin, never because it beats a trial.
And we always ask what else is going on
Almost nobody runs a peptide alone. They run it on TRT, on a GLP-1, mid-cut, on a real training program. And those have large, proven effects of their own. So before we credit a peptide for anything, we ask what the known commodities are already doing. If you're on testosterone, a great deal of your "results" are the testosterone. Regardless of what's in the other vial. The honest read is usually: that's the proven thing doing the heavy lifting, and the peptide on top is an open question.
That's why every profile carries a confound watch. And why we look for objective markers instead of just trusting the feeling. More on whether it's placebo.
We put the method out in the open because we have nothing to sell and nothing to hide. This is education, not medical advice -- talk to a licensed clinician before making any health decisions. Find a weight you disagree with? Tell us. That's how it gets better.