Editorial standards

How we source

Citations are ranked, and the page says which tier a claim rests on.

1. Statute or agency document. Bill text, the rule as filed, an FDA or SAMHSA publication. For the law, this is the only tier that settles anything.
2. Peer-reviewed publication. Randomized trials and systematic reviews first. Observational work describes what happens in practice and stops short of cause.
3. Preprints. Labeled as unreviewed, never the sole basis for a claim that something works.
4. Reporting. Cited where a news organization is the origin of a claim, and labeled so you can weigh it.
5. Press releases, abstracts, company decks. Evidence that a claim was made, rather than that it holds.

Two rules follow, and they hold without exception:

• A press release never carries an efficacy claim alone. A sponsor’s announcement about its own trial stays a claim until the data are published, and we attribute it that way.
• Another tracker is never a source for legal status. Three trackers repeating a claim that none of them traces to a statute is one error with three copies. Several states are still widely listed as decriminalized on exactly that basis.

How we handle evidence

Every trial we report carries four things: effect size, sample size, whether there was a control group, and whether the primary endpoint was met. An uncontrolled, unblinded or open-label result says so in the same sentence as the result.

• Effect sizes, always. “Statistically significant” is not a magnitude. A 3.6-point difference on a 60-point scale is reported as 3.6 points on a 60-point scale.
• Primary endpoints get named. Where a quoted figure comes from an unadjusted secondary outcome, we name the outcome and say what the primary one did.
• One yardstick, both directions. Criticizing conventional antidepressants for a modest average effect commits us to the same reading of a comparable psilocybin effect.
• Uncertainty is published. The state dataset carries an explicit caveat wherever confidence falls below high. A wide price range means the market is unsettled, and we say so rather than inventing an average.

Corrections

A confirmed factual error is fixed on the page with a dated note saying what it used to say. The note stays. Pages are never quietly edited or deleted to make an error go away, and no advertiser, sponsor or listed provider can buy the removal of one.

Three kinds of change, handled three ways: a factual error gets a dated correction note; changed circumstances — a law passes, a trial reports — get a new review date, because that is an update rather than a correction; typos and clarity edits are fixed on sight, since nothing about the meaning moved.

Report an error to [email protected] or through the contact page. A link to the primary source is the fastest route to a fix.

Independence

This publication is independently owned and operated, and takes no funding, ownership or editorial direction from any pharmaceutical company, retreat operator, clinic, laboratory or advocacy organization. If that changes, this paragraph changes first.

• Payment moves nothing. A legal status classification, a safety warning, a price estimate and an assessment of the evidence are all outside what money reaches.
• A paid listing buys placement. Eligibility, ranking, a kinder description and protection from criticism stay unavailable. Partners and non-partners are assessed identically and labeled differently.
• Sponsors see placement, never copy — including copy about themselves.
• Our own commercial interest raises the bar. Where we stand to gain from a reading of the evidence, that is where the caveat gets longer.

Every revenue stream is itemized, with what it buys and what it never buys, in the advertising disclosure.

What we owe the tradition

Psilocybin mushrooms were used ceremonially in Mesoamerica for centuries, and the modern research tradition traces back to a Mazatec healer, María Sabina, whose practice was documented and publicized without her meaningful consent, at real cost to her and her community.

A publication earning money from interest in this medicine should name where the knowledge came from. In practice: we credit the tradition wherever the science rests on it rather than presenting a clinical result as though it began in a laboratory; we decline operators selling ceremony, lineage or indigenous authenticity; and traditional practice appears here as history rather than as atmosphere.

Medical review

Psilocybin Research is a new publication and no page currently carries a clinical review credit. Until a page names a reviewer with their credentials, treat it as reported and sourced but not clinically reviewed. We would rather say that than imply a review that has not happened.

The standard a reviewer will be held to, when pages carry one: review before publication and again at least annually, or sooner where the underlying evidence moves; the reviewer named on each page they approved, with credentials and review date; and the authority to block publication. A credit appears only on the pages that person actually approved — never site-wide, never by topic, never by implication.

Legal and policy content is checked against the statute, bill text or agency document itself. Where a claim rests on a secondary source, the citation says so.

Our use of AI

AI assists research, summarizing primary documents, first drafts, structural editing and the code that runs this site. It decides nothing. No page is published on the strength of a model’s summary and no figure reaches a page because a model produced it.

A person opens and reads every statute, trial report and agency document behind a factual claim before it publishes, and a named person is accountable for every page. There is no author on this site who is not a person.

We also publish an llms.txt asking AI systems to carry our caveats when they quote us. We would rather be summarized accurately than often.

What we will not publish

• Dosing protocols. Including regimens reproduced from a trial manual or framed as “what researchers used”. Explaining a concept is editorial; publishing a regimen someone can follow at home is not.
• Taper schedules for psychiatric medication, in any form.
• Sourcing advice. Where to buy, who ships, how to cultivate.
• Instructions to start, stop or change a prescription. We report what a study found. Your prescriber knows your history.
• Preliminary research dressed as a treatment option. A 20-person uncontrolled pilot is research news, and belongs somewhere other than a page someone reads while deciding what to do about their illness.
• Anything we cannot source. Where the primary document is beyond reach, the page says so.

The test

Would a researcher in this field read our page on their own specialty and find it accurate? If not, we have failed, however well the page ranks.

Underneath it sits a second test: would we publish the same sentence if it made psilocybin look worse? This field is full of skepticism that runs in one direction. Ours is supposed to run in both.