A mirror that does not flatter.

The problem

Consumer diagnostics has become genuinely useful and genuinely untrustworthy at the same time. Panels that cost $500 now cost $99. Tests that were once specialist are sold direct. Millions of people are getting real data about their own bodies for the first time.

And almost none of them can tell whether the “optimal range” on their dashboard reflects the evidence or the business model. Every published optimal-range table belongs to a company selling tests, supplements, or hormone therapy. Panels compete on a biomarker count that includes values calculated from other values. The industry’s own leaders are in court over whose numbers are real.

Meanwhile the counter-evidence (the incidental findings, the null supplementation trials, the markers that predict risk but fail as targets) is almost never published, because nobody funded by referrals has any reason to publish it.

What we do

We maintain three things. A reference range registry that shows the laboratory’s interval and every marketed “optimal” range side by side, with an evidence grade and a plain statement of who profits if you believe it. A panel audit that separates advertised marker counts from independently confirmed ones. And a set of free tools for the questions the dashboards do not answer: what this actually costs per marker, why your state changes the price, and whether you can pay pre-tax.

The standard we hold ourselves to

We take no money from any company we rate. Every marketed range gets its strongest case before it gets criticised, because several of them are right and a reflexively cynical registry would be no more useful than a credulous one. When we have not verified something, the page says so rather than filling the gap with a plausible number.

That last one is the hardest to hold, and it is the one that matters most. A ratings publication that fabricates confidence is worse than no ratings publication, because it launders marketing into something that looks like verification.

Where this is early

This is version one, and it is worth being direct about what that means. The registry covers the highest-demand biomarkers rather than a comprehensive set. Marketed ranges are attributed to categories of seller rather than named companies, pending sourcing. Most panel audits are incomplete. There is not yet a named clinician on the masthead.

All of that is documented in the methodology, including the limitations we would rather you knew about than discovered.