Told in Port
The dull thing is the ship’s log, kept hourly, position by position. The memorable thing is the story told ashore afterwards. Three features of how people process information make the second one land harder — and knowing them does not switch them off.
The record is duller than the story and worth more. These three are how we stay on the record.
Where something is worth reporting, we report how many people it happened to and how many it did not. A named individual with a vivid outcome is the least informative unit of evidence available and by far the most persuasive, which is precisely why it is the standard currency of this category and absent from this site.
Understanding why anecdote persuades you does not make you immune to it, and it does not qualify you to weigh your own case. Someone who can examine you is working from a different and better kind of information than any story or any table.
Knowing how persuasion works is not protection from it, including for us. That is the reason we hold to a rule rather than to judgement in the moment: no customer stories, no named cases, no before-and-after. A rule holds when a good anecdote arrives and judgement does not. We sell no supplement and hold no affiliate arrangement.
Discounting anecdote does not mean discounting your own body. Something you have noticed about yourself is not a testimonial and should not be filtered through anything on this page — it is information only you have, and the reason to take it to a clinician rather than to weigh it against a study. The scepticism here is aimed at strangers’ stories used to sell things, and at nothing else.
Health Notice: Everything published here is general education and nothing beyond that. It reaches no diagnosis, writes no prescription, and substitutes for no part of being examined by a qualified physician. A supplement replaces neither sensible eating nor real clinical care. Any change you are considering — beginning something, discontinuing something, altering an amount — goes to your doctor first, and that is not optional if you are on prescription medication or living with an existing condition.
FDA Statement: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This website is intended for adults 18 years of age or older.
If we have reported a number without its denominator anywhere on this site, that is the error we exist to avoid. Point at it and we will fix it in public.