The Evidence Standard

Abstract

A five-star rating tells you what a crowd felt. It tells you nothing about whether a longevity ingredient works. The supplement and tonic-herb markets run on exactly this kind of signal — reviews, influencer enthusiasm, and packaging — while the thing that actually matters, the weight of primary evidence, stays buried in databases ordinary buyers never open.

This paper sets out the grading standard Longevity Atlas applies to every ingredient, East or West. It is deliberately unglamorous: it rewards reproducible human evidence, treats botanicals and molecules by the same logic, and — most importantly — counts the studies that found nothing.

Informational only — not medical or investment advice. Figures on funding and science are summarized from public reporting and the primary literature; follow the linked signals for sources.