Verified Supplement Data Evidence-based supplement comparisons
Independent · no paid placement Every claim links to its primary source How we verify

Editorial & Verification Standards

Last updated · Methodology · Corrections · About

We don't ask you to trust us — we make every claim checkable. Verified Supplement Data is an independent evidence-synthesis publisher. We take no payment for placement or rankings. Every clinical statement links to its primary source (a PubMed ID), every product figure is verified against the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database, and every cost number is recomputed from the published clinical dose. Where the evidence is weak or mixed, we say so. When we get something wrong, we fix it and log it publicly.

1. Independence & funding

We are an independently owned publisher. We are funded by affiliate commissions on products we link to — not by supplement brands. No brand pays for a ranking, a placement, a favorable review, or inclusion of any kind.

  • Rankings are determined by cost per clinically-effective dose and evidence quality — a formula, not a relationship. The math is published on our methodology page so you can reproduce it.
  • Affiliate links are disclosed on every page that contains them, and again in our site-wide footer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • We routinely recommend the cheaper product, the uncertified product, or "save your money — the evidence doesn't support this," when that's what the data shows. An affiliate site that only ever says "buy" isn't independent; we publish the negative findings too.

2. What we cite — and what we don't

We grade evidence by tier and prioritize the strongest available:

  1. Cochrane systematic reviews and other systematic reviews / meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials
  2. Individual RCTs, when no systematic review exists
  3. Large observational studies (e.g. NHANES) for prevalence, not for efficacy
  4. Government and pharmacopeial sources — NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, FDA, USP, NSF

We do not cite: blog posts citing blog posts, manufacturer marketing claims, anecdote, or "studies show" without a specific study. Every clinical claim on this site carries the PubMed ID of its source, so you can read the original yourself. We label evidence honestly as strong, moderate, or limited — and we don't dress up limited as strong.

3. How we verify a single claim

This is the core of what we do — and the answer to "why should I believe this number?" Each claim is triangulated across independent sources before it's published. For a typical product recommendation, the chain is:

  1. Establish the clinical dose. Pull the dose actually used in the strongest trials from PubMed, and record the PMID(s). Not the label's serving size — the studied dose.
  2. Verify the product delivers it. Cross-check the product's elemental/active dose against its NIH DSLD label record — not the compound weight on the front of the bottle (e.g. elemental magnesium, not magnesium-glycinate weight; combined EPA+DHA, not "fish oil").
  3. Verify quality claims independently. Confirm any third-party certification (USP, NSF, Informed Sport) against the certifier's own database, with the verification date recorded. Absence of certification is reported as absence — never implied as a failure.
  4. Recompute the cost. Calculate cost per clinically-effective daily dose from the current retail price, servings per container, and the studied dose — so a cheap bottle that under-doses doesn't win on sticker price.
  5. Check the PMID is real. Every PubMed ID is validated against the live PubMed API before publication. This was added after we caught and removed an invalid citation — see our corrections log.

A claim that survives all five checks gets published with its sources attached. A claim that fails one gets dropped or downgraded. This is why our pages link out so heavily: the citations are the audit trail.

4. Accuracy & corrections

Factual accuracy is non-negotiable on health content. Our commitments:

  • Every change to a published claim, price, or citation is logged publicly on our corrections page, dated, with what changed and why. We never backdate or invent entries.
  • There's a "Report an error" link in the footer of every page. We aim to review flagged errors within five business days, and to correct genuine errors as soon as they're confirmed.
  • Prices and certifications drift. We tell you the real date our catalog was last reviewed rather than printing today's date on data we haven't re-checked — see our data-freshness policy. The live retailer price always governs at checkout.

5. Authorship & accountability

We're straight about who's behind this. Verified Supplement Data is researched and written by our editorial team directly from primary sources — peer-reviewed literature (PubMed) and government databases (NIH DSLD, FDA). We do not claim to be doctors, and we will never put a clinician's name on content they did not review. We removed previously-used named "reviewer" attributions when we could not stand behind them as genuine review.

Instead of leaning on one expert's reputation, our accountability is structural and checkable: the published methodology, the linked primary source on every claim, and the public corrections log. A real, contactable editorial operation stands behind this work — reach us any time at [email protected].

6. Medical & expert review

Our content is verified against primary clinical literature, as described above. Where content concerns a clinical decision — a dose, a drug–nutrient interaction, a condition-specific recommendation — our standard is that it must be traceable to a systematic review, RCT, or official guidance, and is written to point you to that source rather than substitute for your clinician.

This is health information, not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before starting, stopping, or changing a supplement — especially if you take medications, have kidney disease, or are pregnant or nursing.

7. AI & automation

We use software to do what software is good at: joining structured data across sources (PubMed, DSLD, certification databases, pricing), normalizing doses, and computing cost-per-effective-dose at scale. We do not publish unverified machine-generated claims. Every factual statement is anchored to a primary source a human can open and check, and the underlying data is published openly as a free, citable dataset so anyone — including AI assistants — can audit it directly.

8. Challenge us

If a number here is wrong, a citation doesn't support the claim it's attached to, or a price is stale, we want to know. Email [email protected]. Confirmed errors get fixed and logged on the corrections page — publicly, with attribution to the correction if you'd like it.

Related

  • Methodology — the data sources, evidence tiers, and the cost-per-effective-dose formula
  • Corrections & changelog — every fix we've made
  • Free dataset — our open, CC BY 4.0 data, so you can verify our work at the source
  • About — who we are and why this exists