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Frequently Asked Questions

What Caveat Scientia is, what we’re trying to do, and how to think more clearly about science along the way.

About Caveat Scientia

What is Caveat Scientia?

Caveat Scientia is a science-literacy project. We take claims about science and health that are widely believed, marketed, or feared, and we work out what the evidence actually shows, then explain it in plain language. The aim isn’t to hand you conclusions to memorise; it’s to make you better at judging claims for yourself.

It’s a nod to the old phrase caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware.” Our version points that same caution at knowledge itself: approach scientific claims, especially the confident and dramatic ones, with informed care. The tagline, “in pursuit of deeper understanding,” is the other half of the idea. Scepticism is the tool, understanding is the goal.
Caveat Scientia is written and run by one person with a master’s in science and a decade working in the field, with every factual claim verified against the source before publishing. You can read more on the About page.
Because the gap between what the evidence says and what the headlines say has become enormous, and most people were never taught how to close it. We were all handed science as a pile of facts to trust or distrust, and almost nobody was handed the tools to tell a strong claim from a weak one. This site is an attempt to hand over those tools.
Closest to a science-literacy site that often uses health and nutrition as its examples, because that’s where shaky claims do the most damage and reach the most people. We care more about the thinking habits than any single topic, which is why the same tools show up whether the subject is a diet, a statistic, or a supposed breakthrough

Our Principles and Independence

What are your guiding principles?

Evidence is weighed by quality, not by how striking it is. One study proves nothing. Uncertainty gets stated, not hidden. “Not proven” is kept distinct from “disproven.” And when the evidence changes, we change with it, visibly. The full version, including how we handle funding and sources, is set out on our methodology page.
Two ways. First, we’re more interested in teaching you to evaluate claims than in delivering verdicts, so we show our reasoning rather than asking you to trust it. Second, we’re honest about uncertainty instead of manufacturing confidence, which means we’ll sometimes tell you the unsatisfying truth that the evidence isn’t settled yet.
No, and that distinction matters to us. The goal is to show you how to weigh a claim, not to replace one set of things-to-believe with another. If you finish an article disagreeing with our read but better equipped to argue about the evidence, that’s a success, not a failure.
No. We try to follow the evidence wherever it goes, which means our conclusions won’t line up neatly with any camp. Scepticism aimed only at the claims you already dislike isn’t scepticism; it’s motivated reasoning, and we try hard to avoid it, including when the comfortable answer would be more popular.
We don’t accept sponsorship or affiliate revenue from health, supplement, or wellness brands, because the entire value of the site depends on not having a stake in the answer. More on this is on the methodology page.
Yes, as a research and synthesis tool, never as the source of truth. Every article starts with a human thesis, every source is read directly by a person, and every fact is verified against the primary literature before it runs. We lay the whole process out, and explain why we think it’s a good use of the technology, on our methodology page.
We look for claims that are widely believed, widely marketed, or widely feared, and where the gap between the popular story and the actual evidence is big enough to be worth explaining. If everyone already understands something correctly, there’s nothing for us to add.
We update the article, note what changed and when, and leave the correction visible rather than quietly editing it away. Getting things wrong is part of following evidence honestly; hiding it isn’t.

Science Literacy, Generally

Why does science seem to change its mind so often?

Because changing its mind in response to better evidence is exactly what science is supposed to do. What looks like flip-flopping is usually the system working: early, weak findings get overturned as stronger evidence arrives. A field that never revised anything wouldn’t be more trustworthy; it would be dead
Any single study can be a fluke, badly designed, too small, or simply wrong, and even good ones only capture one slice of a question. Confidence comes from many studies pointing the same way and from results that hold up when other people repeat them. A lone study is a data point, not a verdict.
Because headlines are built to be clicked, and the truth is usually more boring than the click. A finding gets stripped of its caveats, a modest effect gets inflated, and an early result gets reported as settled. The study underneath is often fine; the problem is everything that happens on its way to you
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding of what we do. Real scepticism isn’t refusing to believe anything; it’s calibrating how much to believe to how good the evidence is. That often means trusting well-established science more, not less, while staying wary of the shaky and the overhyped
It can be, when “research” means searching until you find something that confirms what you already wanted to believe. But the answer isn’t to stop thinking and defer blindly; it’s to learn to evaluate evidence properly, which includes noticing when a source is weak or when you’re only collecting what flatters your view. Informed evaluation and cherry-picking are opposites, even though they can look similar from the outside.
Expert disagreement is usually a sign that the evidence is genuinely unsettled, which is useful information in itself. Rather than picking the expert you like, it helps to ask where the weight of evidence sits, how strong it is, and how confident each side actually claims to be. Sometimes the honest answer is “nobody knows yet,” and recognising that is its own kind of literacy.
Ask “compared to what, and how do they know?” It forces the two questions that most misleading claims can’t survive: what the baseline is, and what evidence actually sits behind the assertion. Almost everything else we teach is a more detailed version of those two questions.

Using the site and getting involved

I don't have a science background. Is this for me?

Especially for you. Nothing here assumes prior training, and the whole premise is that you don’t need a degree to think clearly about scientific claims, just a few good habits and a bit of practice. If anything, the jargon-free approach tends to suit non-specialists better than experts.
The three pillar pages are the main entry points, each with a short “start here” reading path. If you’d rather have something practical in hand first, the free guide below distils the core red flags onto a single pag
Yes, and we read every suggestion. The best ones are claims you keep seeing repeated where you’re not sure whether they hold up. There’s a contact link on the site.
Please do. We’d much rather hear it and fix it than leave something wrong on the site, and genuine corrections are how the whole project stays honest. That email gets read.
We publish one in-depth article a month. You can get it, along with the free study-reading guide, by joining below. One email a month, no more, and you can leave any time.
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