Editorial standards
The sourcing, grading and refusal rules this publication works to, including why we publish no figures we cannot source and no before and after images.
Sourcing
We cite institutions and primary sources rather than summaries: regulators, statutory bodies, professional bodies, peer-reviewed journals and consensus reporting frameworks. Where we describe a regulatory position we link the legislation or the published guidance, and we state that the primary source is the authority rather than our description of it.
If we cannot name a source with confidence, we do not cite it. That rule removes a certain amount of persuasive material from our articles and we consider the trade worthwhile.
Figures
We publish no effect size, sample size, percentage, price or statistic that we cannot source. Where such a figure would normally appear, we describe the shape of the evidence and say explicitly that the figure is not one we can source.
This is the rule readers notice most and it is deliberate. A number without its study, its population, its confidence interval and its design carries an air of precision it has not earned, and once published it propagates into other people's articles. Teaching a reader how to find and evaluate a figure is more useful than handing them one.
Grading
Every substantive claim we examine gets an evidence panel with a level, a grade from a fixed vocabulary, the main confounders, and a mandatory line naming what would change the assessment. The vocabulary is published at the grading vocabulary and nothing outside it may be used.
Grades move when evidence arrives. When one moves we say so and record the evidence against the line in the original panel that named what we were waiting for.
Clinics and providers
We do not rank clinics, publish best-of lists, or assess clinical practice. Doing so would require access to records, outcomes, complication rates and governance information that we do not have for any provider, so any ranking we published would be a ranking of marketing.
Where we name a provider, it is to illustrate how a market is organised, we state explicitly that we have not assessed their clinical practice, and we assert nothing about their results, staff, pricing or premises.
Images
We publish no before and after photographs, because we cannot verify the lighting, positioning, expression, makeup, camera settings or processing behind any such pair, and an unverifiable image is not evidence.
All imagery on this site is generated abstraction in a laboratory and microscopy idiom. It is captioned as generated, it depicts no real specimen, and no image on this site is or should be read as a micrograph, a clinical photograph or a record of anything. There are no people, no clinics, no products and no brands in any image we publish.
Language
British English. No em dashes. We avoid promotional register, superlatives and the words that make a claim sound established without asserting anything: revolutionary, breakthrough, cutting edge, game changing. We also avoid the mirror-image failure of writing off a field because parts of it are oversold.
Where a term has a strict scientific meaning and a looser commercial one, we say which we are using. Exosome, regenerative and stem cell are the three where this matters most on this site.
Commercial separation
Editorial and commercial are separate functions and the separation is one directional: commercial parties have no input into editorial, and editorial has full sight of commercial arrangements. Paid listings are labelled on every appearance and ordered alphabetically. The newsletter sponsor line is labelled. No commercial arrangement can influence an evidence grade, an article, a correction, or whether a claim is covered.
What we refuse at any price is published on the rate card.
Corrections and challenges
Errors are corrected and the correction is stated rather than made silently. Anyone may challenge a grade by sending a citation to desk@exosomaltherapy.co.uk. If the study meets the standard set out in the panel's final line, the grade moves. If it does not, we say why. We publish both exchanges, because a grading system that is never challenged in public is not being tested.
What we are not
Not a clinic, not a medical service, not a source of medical advice, not a regulator, and not a substitute for reading the primary sources we link. Anyone making a clinical or a legal decision should take advice appropriate to their situation.
The science briefing
One email a fortnight. What was published in extracellular vesicle and regenerative aesthetics research, what it actually showed, and which claims moved on our grading scale. Written for people who read the methods section.
No spam, unsubscribe in one click. We never pass your address to a third party. See privacy.
Sponsor slot Each issue carries one labelled sponsor line at the foot. Sponsorship buys that line and nothing else. It cannot influence an evidence grade, a correction, or whether a claim is covered. Rate card and refusals.