Making sense of the science
Making sense of the science: 10 articles from What Are Peptides. Plain-English answers about peptides.
What Does "Off-Label" Mean?
An approved medicine, used for something its approval does not cover. It is common, often legal, sometimes the best option available — and it is a completely different thing from a product that was never approved at all.
What Is a Conflict of Interest in Research?
Who paid for a study, and who stands to benefit from its result, is not a detail. It is part of the evidence — and there is a short paragraph at the end of most papers that tells you, if you know where to look.
What Is a Phase 3 Trial?
Every medicine climbs the same ladder of human testing. Phase 3 is the rung where a treatment finally has to prove itself in large numbers — and where most of the surprises, good and bad, turn up.
What Is a Preprint?
A finished research paper, made public before anyone independent has checked it. Preprints get good science out fast — and in 2020 the whole world learned what happens when weak science gets out just as fast.
What Is an Adverse Event?
It is the trial word for "something happened". Not "the treatment did this" — only that something did, written down so that someone can work out later whether the two are connected.
Why Two Sources Disagree About the Same Compound
You look something up, one page calls it promising, another says there is no evidence, and both cite studies. Here is why that happens, and why it usually means the evidence is incomplete rather than that somebody is being dishonest.
What Does "Research Use Only" Mean?
Four words on a label, easy to read straight past. They are not fine print — they name a real category, and they tell you which list of requirements was never applied to the material inside.
How to Read a Health Claim
Most claims that mislead people are made entirely of true statements. Here is how the wording does it, one move at a time, and the five short questions that put the missing pieces back.
What Is a Clinical Trial?
A trial is not just a group of people trying something and reporting back. It is a comparison, arranged carefully in advance — and the care taken over that arrangement is what decides whether the result is worth anything at all.
Why a Mouse Study Is Not a Human Study
You read that something "was shown to heal injuries." That sentence may be perfectly true and still be describing twelve mice. Here is how to tell the difference, and why it matters more than almost anything else you can learn about reading health claims.