How We Rate the Evidence
Why our top rating is Moderate, and never Strong.
Every verdict on the Rep Room carries a rating. The rating tells you how much confidence the current research supports, not how loud the claim is online. We read the studies, weigh their quality, and describe what we actually found. When the evidence is thin, we say so.
The ladder
These are the only ratings we use. Each one maps to a plain-language meaning.
| Rating | What it means |
|---|---|
| Moderate | Consistent evidence, but real limits remain. |
| Weak | Some signal, low certainty. |
| Mixed | Studies disagree. |
| It Depends | The answer changes with the person or goal. |
| False | The claim is not supported. |
There is no Strong on this ladder. That absence is deliberate. In fitness and nutrition, the research rarely reaches a level of certainty that would justify the word. Capping at Moderate keeps our language honest about what we can and cannot know.
Why we cap at Moderate
Most training and nutrition studies are small. Many run for a few weeks, use young or already-trained volunteers, and measure outcomes that do not always transfer to everyday life. Effects that look clear in one lab often shrink or vanish when another team tries to repeat them.
We follow the spirit of the GRADE approach used in evidence-based medicine. That means we look at study design, sample size, consistency across studies, and how directly the findings apply to real people. When those checks hold up, the strongest word we will use is Moderate. It is a ceiling we set on purpose, so a promising result is never dressed up as a settled fact.
How often we review
Ratings are not permanent. We revisit a verdict when new studies land, when a body of research grows, or when a reader flags something we missed. If the evidence shifts, the rating shifts with it. Each verdict shows when it was last checked so you can see how current it is.
Editorial independence
We take no brand deals and no paid placements in our ratings. No company can buy a Moderate. No supplement maker can soften a False. Our verdicts are written by people who do not know, and do not care, who is advertising this week.
Standard display advertising keeps the Rep Room free. Advertisers buy space on the page, never a word of our judgment, and every ad is labelled Advertisement. If we ever cannot separate the two, the ad comes down before the verdict changes.