Why you can’t trust study abstracts

One of the biggest sources of myths in beauty is misunderstanding how scientific research works, and how to interpret scientific evidence. A huge problem I’ve seen is people relying on abstracts – the short summary of the paper – instead of reading the full text. Here’s why this isn’t a good idea. This article is based on part of this …

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Why “scientific” products don’t always work: mechanistic reasoning

good bad mechanism outcome

There’s a troubling pattern with a lot of “science-based” cosmetic products. Many of them make claims solely based on mechanistic reasoning, rather than any actual measured effects on humans.  This is a big problem because mechanistic reasoning often doesn’t predict what happens on actual humans – and it’s especially the case with the ways these claims are often used for …

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Why “peer reviewed” studies aren’t reliable (especially for beauty science)

peer review process

There are a lot of myths in beauty, and over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of them come from misunderstanding how science and scientific evidence works.  Here’s one big misconception: the idea that if a source is “peer reviewed”, it’s automatically higher quality than a source that isn’t. Unfortunately, it isn’t any sort of guarantee, especially for a …

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