Scientific & Editorial Policy

Editorial mission

NMN 101 exists to give readers an accurate, precisely-worded picture of what is and isn't known about NMN and NAD+ biology — distinguishing established biochemistry from preclinical findings from human clinical evidence at every step, and stating plainly when evidence is insufficient rather than filling gaps with plausible-sounding language. This hub is published by Novera, a company that sells an NMN supplement. That commercial relationship does not change the standard applied to the content: commercial interest does not justify stronger scientific wording than the evidence supports. Where the honest answer is "insufficient evidence" or "not established," this hub says so, even where a stronger claim would be more commercially convenient.

Source hierarchy

This hub prioritizes sources in the following order: (1) primary peer-reviewed research — the original study itself, directly inspected; (2) authoritative peer-reviewed systematic reviews and meta-analyses; (3) primary regulatory records (statutes, regulator decisions, official scientific opinions) for regulatory content specifically; (4) major scientific-consensus reference sources (such as NCBI Bookshelf/StatPearls) for well-established background facts. Supplement-industry blogs, marketing pages, competitor websites, and social-media claims are never used as scientific or regulatory evidence; secondary sources may help locate primary material but do not replace it. Full detail on how this is applied is on Research Methodology.

Primary vs. secondary evidence, and human vs. preclinical evidence

This hub distinguishes primary sources (the original study or official record) from secondary sources (something describing that study or record), and separately distinguishes preclinical evidence (cell culture, isolated tissue, animal models, mechanistic experiments) from human evidence (observational studies, pharmacokinetic studies, randomized trials, other controlled interventions, meta-analyses). Both distinctions are treated as load-bearing, not stylistic — a preclinical finding is never presented as if it were human evidence, and a secondary summary is never presented as if it were direct verification of a primary source. See Preclinical vs. Human NMN Evidence for the full explanation with worked examples.

Evidence-level taxonomy

Every page on this hub carries one of seven evidence-level labels: Established biochemistry (well-characterized, textbook-level biological mechanism); Strong human evidence (multiple well-designed human studies converge); Emerging human evidence (some human evidence exists but is preliminary, limited, or not yet replicated); Preclinical evidence (cell or animal data only, explicitly not yet tested in humans for the claim at hand); Mechanistic hypothesis (a plausible biological mechanism with limited direct testing at any level); Insufficient evidence (current evidence does not support a conclusion either way); and Mixed / multiple levels (a page's content spans several of the above and cannot be reduced to one label). Labels are assigned by auditing the page's actual content against these definitions, not chosen first and written to.

The claim-to-source standard

Every material factual claim on this hub is classified DIRECT (the inspected source directly supports the claim at the precision used), INDIRECT (broader support exists but not the precise claim), or UNSUPPORTED (the claim cannot be substantiated by any identified source). The editorial target across the hub is INDIRECT = 0 and UNSUPPORTED = 0: when a claim doesn't meet DIRECT, it is narrowed to what the source actually supports, re-sourced to a source that does support it, or removed — not published with a hedge that quietly leaves it standing. Full definitions and the audit process are on Research Methodology.

How null and negative findings are handled

Null and negative results are reported with the same specificity as positive ones, and are not omitted to make a page read more favorably. Where a trial's positive finding was a secondary or exploratory outcome and its prespecified primary endpoint was null, both facts are stated together — the secondary finding is never presented as if it were the trial's main result.

Funding and conflict-of-interest transparency

Funding and competing-interest disclosures are reported per paper, sourced only from that paper's own disclosure or an equivalently authoritative primary record — never inferred from a different paper, a later disclosure, an author's general reputation, or a company relationship disclosed elsewhere. Papers are labeled Industry funded / author employment, Industry ties disclosed, No competing interests reported, or Funding/COI not independently verified. Industry funding does not automatically invalidate a study — it is reported as context for interpretation, not as a disqualifier.

Handling uncertainty

Where the primary-source record is genuinely ambiguous, incomplete, or could not be independently verified to this hub's standard, that is stated explicitly on the page in question rather than resolved by guessing in whichever direction reads more confidently. This applies to scientific claims and, in Batch 6, to regulatory claims as well.

Correction policy

When new evidence, an error, or a more precise source is identified after a page is published, the page is corrected and its "last reviewed" date is updated. Material corrections are made transparently; this hub does not silently rewrite a claim without being able to explain, if asked, what changed and why. Locked content from a prior batch is not edited without deliberate review and authorization — if new evidence appears to conflict with previously published content, that conflict is reported and resolved deliberately rather than patched quietly.

Review and update dates

Every page carries a "last reviewed" date. Scientific content is reviewed against the literature current as of that date; it is not continuously live-updated, and a reader should treat older "last reviewed" dates as a signal to check for more recent primary literature independently, particularly for a fast-moving research area like this one.

Regulatory-content review

Regulatory pages are held to the same primary-source standard as scientific pages, adapted for legal/regulatory material: statute and regulation first, then a regulator's own decisions and official scientific opinions, then regulatory guidance, with secondary legal commentary used only as context, never as the basis for a stated conclusion. Regulatory pages are explicitly time-stamped and flagged as time-sensitive, and are educational information rather than legal advice.

No fake reviewers, no invented editorial board

This hub does not claim independent medical review, and does not present content as having been reviewed by a named physician, scientist, or advisory board unless that review has actually occurred and can be substantiated. Content on this hub is attributed to the Novera Editorial Team — a real, internal editorial function, not an invented panel of external credentialed reviewers. If independent medical or scientific review is added in the future, that will be stated plainly and accurately, not implied through generic-sounding credentials.

Commercial and editorial separation

Novera sells an NMN supplement. This hub's scientific and regulatory content is not written to support marketing claims, and is not adjusted based on whether a given finding is commercially favorable. Where the evidence does not support a stronger claim than "insufficient evidence" or "not established," that is what this hub states, regardless of commercial implications. This hub does not accept sponsored content or paid placement affecting its scientific conclusions.

Related reading

For the detailed process behind this policy, see Research Methodology. For the full reference index this policy governs, see NMN Research Library.