Editorial Code of Conduct

People read this site before spending a few hundred dollars a month on a compounded drug that is not FDA-approved, often for a benefit no controlled trial has demonstrated. That is the decision our pages feed into, and it sets the standard below. These rules bind everyone who writes or edits here, and they sit alongside our editorial policy and methodology.

1. No fabrication, and a citation from memory counts as one

We do not invent or embellish data, results, quotes or sources. The specific failure this rule is written against is the plausible citation: real-sounding authors, a real journal, a year that fits, and no such paper. It is easy to produce and hard for a reader to catch, which is exactly why we treat writing a reference from memory as fabrication rather than as a shortcut. Every citation is confirmed in a primary database before publication or it does not publish. Fabricating a source is grounds for retracting the work it appears in.

2. Say how thin the evidence is

Accuracy in this category is mostly a matter of not overstating. We distinguish a randomized human trial from an animal model from a cell-culture result, and we never let one format borrow another’s evidence. We say when something is compounded, and therefore not FDA-approved and not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy or quality before it is dispensed. We say when a trial measured a blood level rather than how anyone felt. Where the data are thin, the sentence says so rather than going quiet.

3. Conflicts of interest

Anyone contributing here must disclose to the editors any financial, personal or professional interest that could reasonably be seen to affect their coverage — a stake in a provider or pharmacy being reviewed, for instance. A material conflict means recusal from the verdict on that topic. No contributor may take personal payment, product or gifts from a company in exchange for coverage, and NAD Picks is not paid to hold an opinion.

4. What a commercial relationship can and cannot buy

NAD Picks is reader-supported and earns through labeled affiliate partnerships, mostly via the Katalys network, under the FTC’s endorsement guides (16 CFR Part 255). A partnership can buy placement — being listed first, being featured — and where it does, the placement is labeled.

It cannot buy a verdict, a score, a ranking rationale, or the softening of a safety statement, and refusing to partner cannot be punished with a worse one. That is not only a promise: the function that computes a score does not receive the provider’s commercial status at all, and a test asserts the score is identical either way. Nature of reviews shows the three pages on this site where that rule visibly cost us money.

5. No manufactured urgency

Longevity marketing runs on the idea that you are already behind and every month of delay is lost. We do not write that way. No countdowns, no “aging backwards”, no implying that a reader who waits to see better evidence has made a mistake. Waiting is frequently the correct decision here and we will say so when it is.

6. Reporting a breach

If you think something here breaks these rules — a citation that does not check out, an undisclosed conflict, a verdict that reads as bought — write to editorial@nadpicks.com. We investigate and we answer. If you are right, the fix goes through corrections, in public.