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I don't think I've come across the site before, but at first glance it doesn't look reputable at all. --I realize that looks aren't everything, but I see the f

I don't think I've come across the site before, but at first glance it doesn't look reputable at all. --I realize that looks aren't everything, but I see the following that look like red flags to me: 1. They show logs for news sources such as The New York Times, BBC, etc., but they don't actually link to those sites, let alone to articles that actually mention this site. 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". 3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? 4. The attempts to get me to spend money feels slimy. --This is pretty subjective, I know, but that's how it comes off to me. So I can understand how this site wouldn't rank high in a search engine. I would need to do a lot of research to decide whether or not to trust it, let alone whether or not they have information that's actually worth spending money on.

johnnyfaehell 7y ago
>3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? One of the reviews by professionals is John Berardi of Precision Nutrition if you're into nutritional research and can't verify him. Then, in my opinion, this site is not for you. You'll need something simplier.
- domnomnom 7y ago
  Yeah that's really all there is to it. I'll admit it's a bit difficult with the UX at first, but there's a lot of info there.
- tallanvor 7y ago
  The question is twofold: 1) why should I trust him, and 2) assuming I trust him, how do I know he actually recommended this site? Now, for the first one, why should I trust him? He apparently earned a PhD, but his research credits seem to be minimal, at least in terms of what he lists on his own website. Second, he seems to be a co-founder of Precision Nutrition, which suffers from a lot of the same problems as Examine.com. Seriously, let's look at the first entries in their "Free Articles" section: "How do you rank as a health, fitness, and nutrition coach?" "Opening October 2019: The Brand-New Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification" "Opening October 2019: The Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class. " "FREE 5-day course: Fitness and Nutrition Coaching Breakthroughs" "How to answer the most common nutrition questions like a boss." Click-bait and attempts to sell things. And then there's the second part of the question - how do I know John Berardi actually recommends this site? I don't without taking the site at their word.
  - johnnyfaehell 7y ago
    This is a bit of a scatterbrained post I think but there are some valid points in there (sometimes repeatedly) > Second, he seems to be a co-founder of Precision Nutrition, which suffers from a lot of the same problems as Examine.com. Seriously, let's look at the first entries in their "Free Articles" section: Firstly, you don't do a lot of nutritional research, do you? Or research on fitness and health? There was a reason why I wrote what I did. This company is one of the major players in that sector. Hence why if you can't verify that he endorses this website you should be looking for an easier to digest source that comes from one of your favourite publishing houses. When you do research on a website do you just look at that website? If so, I have bad news for you. You are doing a terrible job of researching. And most likely will result in getting yourself scammed by thinking you can spot a scam website when you can't. Step 1. Google the site. - It's quite a comprehensive result page including multiple related searches. Step 2. Look at what other orgnisations trust this one. If you look at the courses they sell, you'll see they're accepted by multiple groups. (Again, if you want to be save you do separate research on them) Step 3. Look at their social media. Their social media seems to be rather good. Not every post is selling something. First 4 I seen, not a single "buy this" or anythig. Just standard fitness stuff I would expect. > Click-bait and attempts to sell things. Business tries to sell things. The fact you've stated this multiple times tells me you are far too into the tech culture of VCs paying for your toys. In the business world without VCs paying for growth these companies need to sell you stuff. The sales tactics are well sales tactics. But just because someone is trying to sell you something doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about. Since every expert in any field is selling you stuff. Now let's look at these clickbait things. Ok two of them aren't clickbait at all. They are very clear on what is going on. It's alerting you that the new round of courses that they do and have been doing for years are starting. In my experience, any company selling you a course that you can just sign up and start straight away is selling you a course not worth a penny. (Disclaimer I've done their PN1 course and let me say it's worth every penny). So firstly, we've got something to give me confidence about the course. It has a start date. This also tells me who they're targetting. They are targetting professional coaches. So that means stuff like how do you rank as a coach is something they're going to want to read and get an idea to see how they are. Realistically, I find these hard to classify as clickbait since when you click on it. You get what you expect. Are they written with the intention to help sell you stuff? Yes. Just like nearly everything else you read on a company website. I just think you're just far too used to the tech approach that you think it should apply to everything else even though the customers are different. > And then there's the second part of the question - how do I know John Berardi actually recommends this site? I don't without taking the site at their word. You use Google. I instantly found the below post. So these two are friends who visit each others houses it seems. Friends giving friends quotes, pretty much how all quotes on these websites are created in my experience. https://www.facebook.com/john.berardi.page/posts/2233777083353196 https://www.facebook.com/john.berardi.page/posts/22337770833... If you listen to the guys podcasts, etc. You'll all certainly hear him talking about them. If you're on his newsletter you'll read about them at some point. Anytime you want to know if a quote is real, you're going to need to do research. But if you were into this subject you would probably hear 4-5 respected people telling you about how awesome examine is. Which comes back to my original point of if you can't verify that quote, it's not for you. The guy's reputation in the field is so high and he's repeatedly publically suggested their services.
nullbyte 7y ago
Look at an Examine page for a specific supplement. It gives immensely useful information and links to plenty of studies. Examine is definitely my favorite site to use when researching Nootropics.
MFogleman 7y ago
Examines strengths is their pages on individual items. The rest I imagine if SEO fodder. They do try to sell their guide, but their website is one of the top references for a lot of nerds trying to research ingredients in nootropics, multivitamins, and preworkouts. Take for example their page on Creatine[1]. Summarizes and links 746 references. Their chart goes over "What do people claim this does" "How much of an effect does it have on that thing" "How sure are we about that" [1] https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/ https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/
- walshemj 7y ago
  As some one who has been dealing with a condition where I am very concerned about Creatine. Shear numbers is not really a good metric a paper from a renal specialist like, say the main doctor I saw for years and set up the renal unit at Lister has say a different value to some other citations/
  - AhmedF 7y ago
    > renal doctor. Our HEM specifically mentions kidney function and links to studies that looked at creatine and kidney function.
heymijo 7y ago
I've been following the guy that created this since before it was a site. He was on Reddit just doing the work to synthesize research and share it with everyone. It naturally grew in to this and from what I have seen over the past 8-ish years is that they have maintained their integrity while creating a sustainable business. TLDR: it's legit
jgmmo 7y ago
Yeah you did a very cursory, cosmetic look at the site and judged it by its subject matter and web design choices. If you would've bothered to look under the hood, you would see that they reference tons of scientific sources and provide a level of transparency and knowledge-base to the sports supplement industry that is unrivaled. To be clear, There is no other site nearly as good as Examine for this subject matter.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  That doesn’t matter. If a cursory visit doesn’t inspire confidence, users will back out and that will look like low engagement/low value to Google’s ranking analysis. It’s actually a more helpful analysis for this topic to do a cursory, cosmetic look.
  - nwienert 7y ago
    Except that examine is an excellent site, and their cursory look was actually more of a "motivated reasoning look". If you land directly on an examine page for a supplement, it's quite clear the site is really well done. I'm a designer as well, not just a developer, and it's layout is really well done: clean, straightforward, clearly presented, and the data is easy to find. They link to studies and always err on the side of caution in their descriptions.
    - tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
      They also recently went through a redesign and I think it's really clean. But yeah, idk about their homepage and stuff, but go on any of their pages for a specific supplement and every sentence is thoroughly cited. It's also a great resource for finding relevant studies if you wanna do your own research.
      - dylan604 7y ago
        except, how does one just magically land one of these specific pages? usually, that would be from a search result page, but that's the point of the post. after that, it's using their site's main landing page, and then browsing/searching/etc. so the main page still has to be usable, and not just the individual articles
domnomnom 7y ago
It's really a hidden gem. They do such a great review of the molecularbiology. Here's a nice example: https://examine.com/supplements/branched-chain-amino-acids https://examine.com/supplements/branched-chain-amino-acids
dmix 7y ago
The NYTimes and other news site links and the detailed bios of the medical professionals are on the about page which is very prominent in the nav https://examine.com/about/ https://examine.com/about/ Almost everything you listed is pretty standard landing page web design. Its only a problem if it was actually fake, which it's not. That type of thing aways requires effort on your part. At least read the about page.
- tallanvor 7y ago
  They've decided to make a landing page that tries to be splashy rather than one that inspires confidence. But here's the thing, I also did look at the About page, or part of it. The top of the page is a video (blocked by Privacy Badger), and then they're saying that they are funded by selling things. The New York Times quoted someone from Examine.com, but that was at the very bottom of the article. They do link to a few pages, but I'd definitely not argue that this is a ringing endorsement. The Washington Post article is similar. They don't link to any BBC or The Guardian article, so I don't know how those sites come into play. I'm not familiar with Medpage Today, and Men's Health isn't a source I turn to for hard research. Let's not even go into Forbes. At that point I gave up on the About page. Now, more specific pages do a better job, and do cite actual studies. But even then there are confusing areas. Consider the "Human Effect Matrix" - something that should be making things clear as to what their meta analysis has found: I see the section "Magnitude of Effect", and I see values such as "Minor" with a blue arrow pointing up, or "Minor" with a red arrow pointing down. Now, yes, I can read the tool tip at the top of the section and infer that blue probably means increasing effect and red means decreasing effect, but for many people this isn't going to be clear at all. It's also not always clear if these are positive or negative effects without digging much deeper. So when we get into parts of the site that are more detailed, they're not clear enough for the average person on the internet, and could easily cause confusion. --That's actually a very good reason for Google to not surface them. Which sucks, because I think people are right that they do have good information, they're just not presenting it well.
nesadi 7y ago
Maybe take a cursory look at any of the pages for any food/supplement? It quickly shows the breadth and depth of research that they've gathered. It's the only site I know with this kind of dedication to scientific evidence.
appleshore 7y ago
Written by: Anahad Connor, staff reporter for the NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build-muscle-strength https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... >But for some people, there are certain supplements that can be worth taking, said Kamal Patel, a nutrition researcher and the director of Examine.com, a large and independent database of supplement research. Here are two of them. >To learn more about which supplements you might be beneficial, take a look at the following resources from Examine.com. Whey protein Protein supplements Creatine
AhmedF 7y ago
Let me address these: 1. No one links to them. You are welcome to google. Eg here: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build-muscle-strength/ https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... - you'll see their entire supplement section is from our site 2. That is our one, and it's more of a play on 2019 and 19. If you read the article, you'll see it's no-nosense. 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.com/drmikehart https://twitter.com/drmikehart - you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others. 4. We analyze information and sell that for revenue. We are a business - alas, we have no tree that grows money in our backyard.
- jackpirate 7y ago
  3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.com/drmikehart https://twitter.com/drmikehart - you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others. Why don't you just provide a link and save the user from having to google? I'd trust a link to a medical practice looking business website much more than to a twitter account.
- tus88 7y ago
  > 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A link to his biography at his alma-mater, doctor profile at the hospital or clinic where he works, his personal web-site. There are a few things that would inspire confidence.
- tallanvor 7y ago
  1. There is no good reason not to link to them, there are only bad reasons not to link to them. You're not linking to them because they're not outright endorsements, and you know it. 2. The item below that is '4 science-based “superfoods” you should consider eating'. That's pretty much just as much click-bait as the other. 3. You link to the person providing the review, preferably to a page where they actually say that they're recommending your site. Why are you making it my - or anyone else's - job to figure out who is endorsing you and to verify that they really have? 4. Yes, you are a business, and you really make it clear on your main page. Like it or not, people don't put blind faith in companies trying to sell them stuff. That makes your job harder, sure, but that's life. Look, at the end of the day you can ignore what I've written. I'm not claiming to be anyone or have any sort of following. I'm not a developer, I work in support, and I deal with customers, so I spend a lot of time trying to see things from their perspective. You've lost a lot of potential business from Google de-emphasizing your site in their results. I don't claim to know why they've done this, I'm just giving my impressions when I look at things from the perspective of the average user (insomuch as there is an "average user", of course). Looking deeper, I tried to checkout some backlinks to your site. From news sites, I see a couple of trends, some good, some not so good. The Washington Post article you link to is actually one of the better ones - it's not an actual endorsement from WaPo, but it is a 3rd party recommending your site. The article you link to from The New York Times, and another one from The Sydney Morning Herald, aren't really good links - they're quoting Kamal Patel as the director of Examine.com. The NYT at least does provide a few deep links, but still, I doubt it comes off as a real endorsement to the average reader. I could go on, but I'm not an SEO expert, and your reply doesn't really make it seem like you're open to feedback.
sachdevap 7y ago
> 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. > 3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? They actually cite sources. You really need to look at particular topics on the website. > 4. The attempts to get me to spend money feels slimy. --This is pretty subjective, I know, but that's how it comes off to me. As you point out, this is really subjective. And I don't spend money on the website. You are basically saying that they don't do SEO well, not actually critiquing their work. You would not need a lot of research to decide if their page on any supplement, e.g. [0], is reputable, cause they cite sources. [0] https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/ https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/
- OJFord 7y ago
  > > 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". > It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. Nobody that successfully gets my attention does that.
  - enlyth 7y ago
    The front page of BBC is filled with clickbait headlines every day
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      For shame, they've really jumped head long in to being more 'tabloid' and less of a serious news source.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Oddly enough, I rarely visit BBC's homepage, or listen. to their braodcasts any more, for very much this reason. And no, this isn't a "gummint news bad" opinion. Commercial is frequently vastly worse, and the travails of the industry have long been evident. But overt pandering is a brand-killer.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
I could say the same ad infintum about reddit, which is tons popular and still be right.
- root_axis 7y ago
  To be fair, reddit is not a reputable source for much.
jjeaff 7y ago
I don't have an opinion on the authenticity of this particular site. But I would add that having a real doctor endorse something means essentially nothing. And having a "real" news company like NBC, CBS, fox whatever, means just about nothing as well. Just look at all the products that Dr Oz has on his national show and how many times he and those like him get prime news coverage from these so called news sites.
raynr 7y ago
I can't find the reddit comments now, but /u/AhmedF and /u/silverhydra have actually spoken about this before as a challenge they faced when starting examine.com. Nobody will accept strength training advice from a skinny dude, nobody will accept dietary advice that isn't endorsed by Doctor X, MD and Dietician, nobody will read your content if it is not phrased in terms of "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". They have accepted that examine.com must have some of these "red flag" features, else it will never be able to do the good that it was created to do.

johnnyfaehell 7y ago

>3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? One of the reviews by professionals is John Berardi of Precision Nutrition if you're into nutritional research and can't verify him. Then, in my opinion, this site is not for you. You'll need something simplier.

domnomnom 7y ago
Yeah that's really all there is to it. I'll admit it's a bit difficult with the UX at first, but there's a lot of info there.
tallanvor 7y ago
The question is twofold: 1) why should I trust him, and 2) assuming I trust him, how do I know he actually recommended this site? Now, for the first one, why should I trust him? He apparently earned a PhD, but his research credits seem to be minimal, at least in terms of what he lists on his own website. Second, he seems to be a co-founder of Precision Nutrition, which suffers from a lot of the same problems as Examine.com. Seriously, let's look at the first entries in their "Free Articles" section: "How do you rank as a health, fitness, and nutrition coach?" "Opening October 2019: The Brand-New Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification" "Opening October 2019: The Precision Nutrition Level 2 Certification Master Class. " "FREE 5-day course: Fitness and Nutrition Coaching Breakthroughs" "How to answer the most common nutrition questions like a boss." Click-bait and attempts to sell things. And then there's the second part of the question - how do I know John Berardi actually recommends this site? I don't without taking the site at their word.
- johnnyfaehell 7y ago
  This is a bit of a scatterbrained post I think but there are some valid points in there (sometimes repeatedly) > Second, he seems to be a co-founder of Precision Nutrition, which suffers from a lot of the same problems as Examine.com. Seriously, let's look at the first entries in their "Free Articles" section: Firstly, you don't do a lot of nutritional research, do you? Or research on fitness and health? There was a reason why I wrote what I did. This company is one of the major players in that sector. Hence why if you can't verify that he endorses this website you should be looking for an easier to digest source that comes from one of your favourite publishing houses. When you do research on a website do you just look at that website? If so, I have bad news for you. You are doing a terrible job of researching. And most likely will result in getting yourself scammed by thinking you can spot a scam website when you can't. Step 1. Google the site. - It's quite a comprehensive result page including multiple related searches. Step 2. Look at what other orgnisations trust this one. If you look at the courses they sell, you'll see they're accepted by multiple groups. (Again, if you want to be save you do separate research on them) Step 3. Look at their social media. Their social media seems to be rather good. Not every post is selling something. First 4 I seen, not a single "buy this" or anythig. Just standard fitness stuff I would expect. > Click-bait and attempts to sell things. Business tries to sell things. The fact you've stated this multiple times tells me you are far too into the tech culture of VCs paying for your toys. In the business world without VCs paying for growth these companies need to sell you stuff. The sales tactics are well sales tactics. But just because someone is trying to sell you something doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about. Since every expert in any field is selling you stuff. Now let's look at these clickbait things. Ok two of them aren't clickbait at all. They are very clear on what is going on. It's alerting you that the new round of courses that they do and have been doing for years are starting. In my experience, any company selling you a course that you can just sign up and start straight away is selling you a course not worth a penny. (Disclaimer I've done their PN1 course and let me say it's worth every penny). So firstly, we've got something to give me confidence about the course. It has a start date. This also tells me who they're targetting. They are targetting professional coaches. So that means stuff like how do you rank as a coach is something they're going to want to read and get an idea to see how they are. Realistically, I find these hard to classify as clickbait since when you click on it. You get what you expect. Are they written with the intention to help sell you stuff? Yes. Just like nearly everything else you read on a company website. I just think you're just far too used to the tech approach that you think it should apply to everything else even though the customers are different. > And then there's the second part of the question - how do I know John Berardi actually recommends this site? I don't without taking the site at their word. You use Google. I instantly found the below post. So these two are friends who visit each others houses it seems. Friends giving friends quotes, pretty much how all quotes on these websites are created in my experience. https://www.facebook.com/john.berardi.page/posts/2233777083353196 https://www.facebook.com/john.berardi.page/posts/22337770833... If you listen to the guys podcasts, etc. You'll all certainly hear him talking about them. If you're on his newsletter you'll read about them at some point. Anytime you want to know if a quote is real, you're going to need to do research. But if you were into this subject you would probably hear 4-5 respected people telling you about how awesome examine is. Which comes back to my original point of if you can't verify that quote, it's not for you. The guy's reputation in the field is so high and he's repeatedly publically suggested their services.

nullbyte 7y ago

Look at an Examine page for a specific supplement. It gives immensely useful information and links to plenty of studies. Examine is definitely my favorite site to use when researching Nootropics.

MFogleman 7y ago

Examines strengths is their pages on individual items. The rest I imagine if SEO fodder. They do try to sell their guide, but their website is one of the top references for a lot of nerds trying to research ingredients in nootropics, multivitamins, and preworkouts. Take for example their page on Creatine[1]. Summarizes and links 746 references. Their chart goes over "What do people claim this does" "How much of an effect does it have on that thing" "How sure are we about that" [1] https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/ https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/

walshemj 7y ago
As some one who has been dealing with a condition where I am very concerned about Creatine. Shear numbers is not really a good metric a paper from a renal specialist like, say the main doctor I saw for years and set up the renal unit at Lister has say a different value to some other citations/
- AhmedF 7y ago
  > renal doctor. Our HEM specifically mentions kidney function and links to studies that looked at creatine and kidney function.

heymijo 7y ago

I've been following the guy that created this since before it was a site. He was on Reddit just doing the work to synthesize research and share it with everyone. It naturally grew in to this and from what I have seen over the past 8-ish years is that they have maintained their integrity while creating a sustainable business. TLDR: it's legit

jgmmo 7y ago

Yeah you did a very cursory, cosmetic look at the site and judged it by its subject matter and web design choices. If you would've bothered to look under the hood, you would see that they reference tons of scientific sources and provide a level of transparency and knowledge-base to the sports supplement industry that is unrivaled. To be clear, There is no other site nearly as good as Examine for this subject matter.

1123581321 7y ago
That doesn’t matter. If a cursory visit doesn’t inspire confidence, users will back out and that will look like low engagement/low value to Google’s ranking analysis. It’s actually a more helpful analysis for this topic to do a cursory, cosmetic look.
- nwienert 7y ago
  Except that examine is an excellent site, and their cursory look was actually more of a "motivated reasoning look". If you land directly on an examine page for a supplement, it's quite clear the site is really well done. I'm a designer as well, not just a developer, and it's layout is really well done: clean, straightforward, clearly presented, and the data is easy to find. They link to studies and always err on the side of caution in their descriptions.
  - tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
    They also recently went through a redesign and I think it's really clean. But yeah, idk about their homepage and stuff, but go on any of their pages for a specific supplement and every sentence is thoroughly cited. It's also a great resource for finding relevant studies if you wanna do your own research.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      except, how does one just magically land one of these specific pages? usually, that would be from a search result page, but that's the point of the post. after that, it's using their site's main landing page, and then browsing/searching/etc. so the main page still has to be usable, and not just the individual articles

domnomnom 7y ago

It's really a hidden gem. They do such a great review of the molecularbiology. Here's a nice example: https://examine.com/supplements/branched-chain-amino-acids https://examine.com/supplements/branched-chain-amino-acids

dmix 7y ago

The NYTimes and other news site links and the detailed bios of the medical professionals are on the about page which is very prominent in the nav https://examine.com/about/ https://examine.com/about/ Almost everything you listed is pretty standard landing page web design. Its only a problem if it was actually fake, which it's not. That type of thing aways requires effort on your part. At least read the about page.

tallanvor 7y ago
They've decided to make a landing page that tries to be splashy rather than one that inspires confidence. But here's the thing, I also did look at the About page, or part of it. The top of the page is a video (blocked by Privacy Badger), and then they're saying that they are funded by selling things. The New York Times quoted someone from Examine.com, but that was at the very bottom of the article. They do link to a few pages, but I'd definitely not argue that this is a ringing endorsement. The Washington Post article is similar. They don't link to any BBC or The Guardian article, so I don't know how those sites come into play. I'm not familiar with Medpage Today, and Men's Health isn't a source I turn to for hard research. Let's not even go into Forbes. At that point I gave up on the About page. Now, more specific pages do a better job, and do cite actual studies. But even then there are confusing areas. Consider the "Human Effect Matrix" - something that should be making things clear as to what their meta analysis has found: I see the section "Magnitude of Effect", and I see values such as "Minor" with a blue arrow pointing up, or "Minor" with a red arrow pointing down. Now, yes, I can read the tool tip at the top of the section and infer that blue probably means increasing effect and red means decreasing effect, but for many people this isn't going to be clear at all. It's also not always clear if these are positive or negative effects without digging much deeper. So when we get into parts of the site that are more detailed, they're not clear enough for the average person on the internet, and could easily cause confusion. --That's actually a very good reason for Google to not surface them. Which sucks, because I think people are right that they do have good information, they're just not presenting it well.

nesadi 7y ago

Maybe take a cursory look at any of the pages for any food/supplement? It quickly shows the breadth and depth of research that they've gathered. It's the only site I know with this kind of dedication to scientific evidence.

appleshore 7y ago

Written by: Anahad Connor, staff reporter for the NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build-muscle-strength https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... >But for some people, there are certain supplements that can be worth taking, said Kamal Patel, a nutrition researcher and the director of Examine.com, a large and independent database of supplement research. Here are two of them. >To learn more about which supplements you might be beneficial, take a look at the following resources from Examine.com. Whey protein Protein supplements Creatine

AhmedF 7y ago

Let me address these: 1. No one links to them. You are welcome to google. Eg here: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build-muscle-strength/ https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... - you'll see their entire supplement section is from our site 2. That is our one, and it's more of a play on 2019 and 19. If you read the article, you'll see it's no-nosense. 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.com/drmikehart https://twitter.com/drmikehart - you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others. 4. We analyze information and sell that for revenue. We are a business - alas, we have no tree that grows money in our backyard.

jackpirate 7y ago
3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.com/drmikehart https://twitter.com/drmikehart - you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others. Why don't you just provide a link and save the user from having to google? I'd trust a link to a medical practice looking business website much more than to a twitter account.
tus88 7y ago
> 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A link to his biography at his alma-mater, doctor profile at the hospital or clinic where he works, his personal web-site. There are a few things that would inspire confidence.
tallanvor 7y ago
1. There is no good reason not to link to them, there are only bad reasons not to link to them. You're not linking to them because they're not outright endorsements, and you know it. 2. The item below that is '4 science-based “superfoods” you should consider eating'. That's pretty much just as much click-bait as the other. 3. You link to the person providing the review, preferably to a page where they actually say that they're recommending your site. Why are you making it my - or anyone else's - job to figure out who is endorsing you and to verify that they really have? 4. Yes, you are a business, and you really make it clear on your main page. Like it or not, people don't put blind faith in companies trying to sell them stuff. That makes your job harder, sure, but that's life. Look, at the end of the day you can ignore what I've written. I'm not claiming to be anyone or have any sort of following. I'm not a developer, I work in support, and I deal with customers, so I spend a lot of time trying to see things from their perspective. You've lost a lot of potential business from Google de-emphasizing your site in their results. I don't claim to know why they've done this, I'm just giving my impressions when I look at things from the perspective of the average user (insomuch as there is an "average user", of course). Looking deeper, I tried to checkout some backlinks to your site. From news sites, I see a couple of trends, some good, some not so good. The Washington Post article you link to is actually one of the better ones - it's not an actual endorsement from WaPo, but it is a 3rd party recommending your site. The article you link to from The New York Times, and another one from The Sydney Morning Herald, aren't really good links - they're quoting Kamal Patel as the director of Examine.com. The NYT at least does provide a few deep links, but still, I doubt it comes off as a real endorsement to the average reader. I could go on, but I'm not an SEO expert, and your reply doesn't really make it seem like you're open to feedback.

sachdevap 7y ago

> 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. > 3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? They actually cite sources. You really need to look at particular topics on the website. > 4. The attempts to get me to spend money feels slimy. --This is pretty subjective, I know, but that's how it comes off to me. As you point out, this is really subjective. And I don't spend money on the website. You are basically saying that they don't do SEO well, not actually critiquing their work. You would not need a lot of research to decide if their page on any supplement, e.g. [0], is reputable, cause they cite sources. [0] https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/ https://examine.com/supplements/ashwagandha/

OJFord 7y ago
> > 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". > It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. Nobody that successfully gets my attention does that.
- enlyth 7y ago
  The front page of BBC is filled with clickbait headlines every day
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    For shame, they've really jumped head long in to being more 'tabloid' and less of a serious news source.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Oddly enough, I rarely visit BBC's homepage, or listen. to their braodcasts any more, for very much this reason. And no, this isn't a "gummint news bad" opinion. Commercial is frequently vastly worse, and the travails of the industry have long been evident. But overt pandering is a brand-killer.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

I could say the same ad infintum about reddit, which is tons popular and still be right.

root_axis 7y ago
To be fair, reddit is not a reputable source for much.

jjeaff 7y ago

I don't have an opinion on the authenticity of this particular site. But I would add that having a real doctor endorse something means essentially nothing. And having a "real" news company like NBC, CBS, fox whatever, means just about nothing as well. Just look at all the products that Dr Oz has on his national show and how many times he and those like him get prime news coverage from these so called news sites.

raynr 7y ago

I can't find the reddit comments now, but /u/AhmedF and /u/silverhydra have actually spoken about this before as a challenge they faced when starting examine.com. Nobody will accept strength training advice from a skinny dude, nobody will accept dietary advice that isn't endorsed by Doctor X, MD and Dietician, nobody will read your content if it is not phrased in terms of "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". They have accepted that examine.com must have some of these "red flag" features, else it will never be able to do the good that it was created to do.