About
The reference we wanted to read
The Atlas holds two things together that usually live apart: what the research shows, and what people actually believe and do about it. An entry on a traditional remedy names the culture it came from before it weighs the trials. An entry on a compound with a devoted following names the people promoting it, and says which of them sell it.
Keeping both means neither one gets to erase the other. A remedy with four hundred years behind it and two poor trials is described as exactly that. So is a molecule with a good trial and no history at all.
The harder discipline is admitting what we have not done. A long entry looks more authoritative than a short one whatever the evidence says, so every entry ends with a list of its own unfinished work. We would rather publish something visibly incomplete than something that quietly implies it checked everything.
How the Atlas works
Every entry carries a grade from 1 to 5 for how much has been proven, which is a different question from whether something works and a different question again from whether it is safe. The methods page sets out what each grade means, how we handle an entry whose evidence differs by treatment, what you can check for yourself and what you cannot yet, and how corrections are made.