Editorial standards

The two devices

This document carries two structural devices and uses them throughout.

An evidence note takes a claim in the form it is usually made, states what kind of evidence would settle it, states what kind of evidence exists, and gives a verdict from the fixed vocabulary set out below. It never contains a figure. It is the mechanism by which this reference is held to a standard, because a note that says what would settle a claim can be checked when such evidence appears.

A not known block lists open questions. It is used deliberately and often, because this category is heavily promoted and thinly evidenced, and a reference that publishes its own gaps is more useful than one that writes around them. Every item is collected in the open questions register.

Rules we hold ourselves to

• No invented figures. No satisfaction rate, no outcome percentage, no complication rate, no duration in months, no price for the treatment. The reasoning is set out at length in the section on numbers. The only figures on this site are legal citations, our own rate card, and counts of our own material.
• No invented sources. Every source cited is a regulator, a professional body, a piece of legislation, a public research index or a government publication, and every one is linked so you can check it. We do not cite studies we cannot point you to.
• No clinics, practitioners, prices, addresses or case studies. Not named, not described, not invented. Where a subject would normally call for a list of businesses, we publish criteria instead.
• No before and after imagery. None on this site, and the reason is given below.
• No promises. Nothing here says a treatment will produce a result, because nothing here could support that.
• No framing of a body as a problem. This document does not describe any feature of any face as a flaw, a concern to be corrected, or a sign of decline. People are entitled to want cosmetic treatment and entitled not to, and neither position requires a defence.
• British English throughout.

Why there are no photographs of people on this site

This is a deliberate decision and it is worth explaining rather than leaving as a stylistic quirk.

Imagery in cosmetic publishing does argumentative work. A photograph of a smooth, evenly lit, young face next to text about a treatment makes a claim that the text would not be permitted to make, and it makes it below the level at which a reader argues back. Before and after pairs do it more directly, and they are among the most regulated forms of cosmetic advertising precisely because lighting, angle, expression and camera can manufacture a difference that the treatment did not produce. This site publishes none.

A reference whose argument is that the evidence for this category is thinner than it is presented as being cannot then use photography to do the persuading. So the imagery on this site is microscopy adjacent scientific abstraction: strand and filament structures in suspension, gel matrices under raking light, diffusion fronts, crystalline growth, layered membranes, fibrous networks, viscosity and slow flow. It is about the material, not about a face.

There are no people, no anatomy, no syringes, no vials, no packaging, no clinic interiors and no before and after pairs anywhere on this site. The images are generated rather than photographed, which is disclosed here so that nobody mistakes them for documentation of anything.

How a verdict changes

A verdict changes when the evidence changes, and the evidence note itself states what would do it. In practice that means one of the following.

• An independent randomised controlled trial with blinded assessment, prespecified registered outcomes and follow up past the point at which the injected material must have cleared.
• A systematic review that finds a body of work capable of supporting a conclusion rather than calling for one.
• Guidance or an assessment from NICE, the MHRA or an equivalent body.
• Published ASA rulings establishing what may and may not be claimed for this category.
• Post market surveillance data providing a genuine denominator.
• A change in the law, including commencement of the licensing power in the Health and Care Act 2022.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Corrections to matters of fact are made as soon as we can verify them. Where a correction changes an evidence verdict, the change is noted in the evidence register and described in the revision email, including what the verdict was before.

We do not remove criticism of the category because someone selling it objects, and we do not soften a verdict because a listing holder asks. Both would end the only thing this document has to offer. The contact page is the route for a correction and it is read.

Independence

No commercial page on this site links to a provider of this treatment. No page anywhere on this site links to a clinic, a practitioner, a manufacturer, a distributor, a training company or an agency. The funding model is set out in full on the about page and the rate card is published on the newsletter page. Nothing in either can affect an evidence verdict, and that is stated as an absolute because it is one.