How the reference is built

Methodology

Every entry follows the same construction and grading process, so a reader can trust that two compound pages mean the same thing by the same words.

The rule

No single token may merge two orthogonal dimensions. Every claim carries what is claimed, and how well it is evidenced — never one number.

Evidence grade vs effect signal — why both

A large effect in a weak study and a small effect in a strong one are different findings. Averaging them into one score destroys the distinction, so the reference refuses to. Every indication carries two tokens: the grade for how the claim was studied, and the effect signal for what was observed.

An effect signal never renders without its grade. Large alone is a lie by omission; D · Large reads correctly as “a big effect, in cell culture.”

Evidence grade · per indication and per reference

AHuman clinicalRandomized or controlled human trial

BHuman preliminaryPilot, open-label, case series, observational, documented clinical use

CAnimal in vivoMammalian model studies

DMechanisticIn vitro, cell culture, pathway or theoretical inference

Effect signal · per indication

LargeEffect substantially exceeded control in the cited work

ModerateClear, consistent effect of ordinary magnitude

SmallDetectable but minor effect

MixedStudies disagree — some positive, some null

No effectStudied and no effect found

Mixed and No effect are states a single score cannot express. An archive that cannot record a negative finding is not an archive.

How grades are assigned today

This is the part of the process still being built, and the site says so rather than implying more rigour than it has.

A reference’s grade is currently derived, not authored: each citation is classified by study design from its title and summary, and a compound’s badge takes the strongest design among its references. Anywhere this appears, the interface labels it as derived and names the number of references behind it. A narrative review never lifts a grade on its own — secondary summaries are not cited as fact.

Not built yet

The published rubric — per-compound P/H/R axes scored 0–3, grades authored against that rubric, and a build-time validator that recomputes from the references and warns on mismatch — is designed but not implemented. Until it is, no entry should be read as rubric-graded.

The three dots

Compound cards carry three dots. They measure how complete an entry is— how much a reader can actually check — and are deliberately not a claim about the strength of the science. Dots never carry meaning alone; every card also states the entry’s depth in words.

Entry completeness · one dot each

1/3At least one source a reader can open and check

2/3Research indications recorded against body system

3/3Molecular identity described — mass, chain length, sequence

A three-dot entry is a well-documented one. It is not a well-evidenced compound — that is what the grade is for.

Sourcing & citations

Every reference resolves to something a reader can open — a PubMed record, a regulatory document or a compendial database. A citation with no reachable source is not shown.

Structured content is compiled from published sources and cross-checked against primary databases where one exists. Where an upstream source disagrees with a primary database, the primary database wins and the override is recorded with the authority that justifies it.

Two examples from this build: two stored PubMed identifiers resolved to unrelated papers and were removed, and BPC-157’s published sequence disagreed with PubChem at residue 2 and was corrected to match.

Corrections

Errors are fixed in place and logged with a dated note. Nothing is silently rewritten. Corrections that overrule an upstream source are held in version control so a re-import cannot quietly reintroduce the original error.

Each dated correction is recorded in the public changelog — the BPC-157 sequence correction and the removal of two fabricated citations are logged there.