Editorial standards

MuscleLedger grades evidence. Every compound we cover gets a row in the same ledger, scored against the same rubric, and the rubric is published here so you can disagree with it.

How the evidence score works

Each compound is scored from 1 to 5. The score describes the quality of the evidence, not how well something works — a 1 means nobody has run the study, not that the compound failed.

• —Human trials outrank animal models. A result in mice is a reason to run a trial, not a reason to act.
• —Trained subjects outrank untrained ones. Almost anything looks effective in people who have never lifted.
• —Independent replication outranks a single laboratory, however good that laboratory is.
• —Performance outranks biomarkers. A hormone that rose is not a lift that improved, and the gap between those two sentences is where most of this industry lives.

Every row states what would change its score — the study that does not exist yet. That line is the most useful thing on the page, because it tells you what we are waiting for rather than pretending we already know.

Sourcing

Claims are cited to the study, named and numbered, so you can read it instead of trusting us. Where a finding comes from a review or a position statement rather than a trial, we say so. Where the evidence is one small study, we say that too, with how many people were in it.

What we do not publish

No doses, no schedules, no protocols, no instructions of any kind — not for research compounds, and not for the legal supplements either. This is a publication about what the research shows, written for people who train. It is not a manual, and no page here will tell you what to take or how much.

Research-only compounds are covered as research journalism: what the studies show, in which models, with which limits.

If you compete

Prohibited-list status is stated on every compound row and updated when the list moves. Anything on it is flagged whether or not it works, because a sanction does not care about the evidence grade. If you are tested, check the current list yourself before you take anything — including things sold as legal.

Honesty about what wins

Our own ledger repeatedly ranks ordinary training, protein intake and creatine above every peptide we cover. We publish that finding as prominently as any other, because a site that only ever concluded "yes, try the exotic thing" would not be grading evidence — it would be selling.