Editorial & Content Policy

1. Why this policy exists

1.1 Anyone can publish skincare advice. Almost everyone does. What distinguishes one page from another is not the confidence of the writing but whether the claims in it can be traced to something, and whether the writer says so when they cannot.

1.2 This policy sets out how the content on this website is produced, what standard a claim has to meet before it is published, and what we do when we get something wrong.

1.3 It is published so that it can be held against us.

2. What we publish, and what we do not

2.1 We publish

• Explanations of skin conditions and skin goals, and of what is known about treating them.
• Descriptions of skincare ingredients: what they do, how well that is established, how to use them, and what to watch for.
• Statements of where the evidence runs out.

2.2 We do not publish

• Individual medical advice. The site is directed at no one in particular. See the Medical & Educational Disclaimer.
• Before-and-after imagery. It is the most persuasive and least reliable evidence in skincare, and it sets an expectation nobody can be held to.
• Testimonials or user reviews of treatments. An anecdote is not evidence, and a page of anecdotes is a sales technique.
• Photographs of identifiable faces. Three were removed from the acne page on 1 September 2026 on this ground.
• Undisclosed commercial relationships. See clause 6.
• Urgency, scarcity or pressure devices in editorial content.
• Claims that a cosmetic product treats, prevents or cures a disease. Cosmetic products are not medicines and we do not describe them as though they were.

3. How a clinical claim gets published

3.1 Every clinical, safety, dosing or regulatory statement on this website is prepared against published sources — clinical practice guidelines, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, randomised trials, clinical reviews, and the published positions of regulators — and is checked against those sources before it is published.

3.1A Every clinical statement on this website is reviewed against the current clinical literature before it is published, and again when that literature or a regulatory position changes.

This is a statement about the process, not about the person. This policy makes no claim about the qualifications of anyone who writes or reviews the content, and nothing on this website should be read as making one. Where you need advice about your own skin from someone who is qualified to give it and who can examine you, see a doctor — the Medical & Educational Disclaimer says the same thing at greater length and it is not a formality.

3.2 A claim must carry a dated, verifiable source. Sources are held in our internal register, not printed beside every sentence, because a page of citations is not readable and readability is the point. The register is maintained so that any claim on the site can be traced to what supports it.

3.3 Evidence is graded, and the grade governs the wording. We distinguish between:

3.4 We do not upgrade the verb to make the sentence read better. "May improve" does not become "improves" because the shorter phrasing is cleaner.

3.5 Where evidence is absent rather than negative, we say it is absent, in those words. "Nobody has studied this properly" is publishable. Implying safety that no data supports is not.

3.6 Where the evidence comes overwhelmingly from the company selling the ingredient, we say so. Several ingredients on this site carry that note. It is not a disqualification, and it is not something a reader should have to find out elsewhere.

3.7 We avoid superlatives and absolutes — best, strongest, safest, proven, guaranteed, always, never, completely — unless the evidence genuinely carries them, which is rare.

3.8 We do not publish specific timeframes or numerical thresholds we cannot source. An invented number is more damaging than no number, because it reads as a measurement.

3.9 Interactive illustrations are labelled as illustrative. Where a tool on this site produces a figure or a verdict from weightings we have chosen, the page says the weightings are illustrative and not a measurement.

4. Products, ingredients, and the line between education and selling

4.1 The education is free, complete, and comes first. It stands on its own whether or not anything is ever bought.

4.2 The recommendation does not follow the shop. The logic that decides what an ingredient is good for is kept separate from anything to do with price, stock, margin or supplier. The recommendation engine is not given commercial information, so it cannot take it into account.

4.3 Education pages do not link to products. Naming an ingredient is education. A click from a symptom straight to a product is a funnel. That separation is deliberate and it is not a technical limitation.

4.4 We do not operate:

• "frequently bought together" or similar upsell mechanics;
• urgency or scarcity devices at the point of purchase; or
• pricing tied to how severe a person's problem is.

4.5 We do not accept payment, product, or any other consideration in exchange for editorial coverage of an ingredient or a brand. If we ever did, the page would say so in the page, not in a footnote.

5. Corrections

5.1 We correct errors, and we say that we have.

5.2 Where a correction is material — where it changes what a reader should do — the page records what changed and when.

5.3 We do not silently amend a page and leave it looking as though it always said the new thing. An unrecorded correction is indistinguishable from never having been wrong, and a site that is never wrong is not being checked.

5.4 Tell us if we have got something wrong. Email hello@sensible.com.sg with the page and the claim. If you can point at a source, better. We would rather be corrected by a reader than leave a wrong sentence up.

5.5 We do not present hypothetical corrections as though they were real ones. Content is not framed as a retraction of something we never published.

6. Independence and conflicts

6.1 This website is operated by a commercial business that intends to sell skincare products. As at 4 September 2026 it stocks nothing and sells nothing, but the intention is enough: that is a conflict of interest, and stating it plainly is the first control on it. The controls below apply from now, not from the day the first product is listed.

6.2 The controls we apply:

(a) the recommendation logic has no access to commercial data (clause 4.2);

(b) education pages carry no product links (clause 4.3);

(c) ingredients are graded on evidence, including ingredients we sell and ingredients we do not;

(d) ingredients whose evidence is weak are described as weak, including where we stock them. Several entries on this site say in terms that an ingredient is popular but not independently shown to work, and that it is listed for completeness rather than as a recommendation; and

(e) prescription-only options are named where they are the better answer, even though they cannot be bought here.

6.3 We hold no undisclosed relationship with any brand, manufacturer or distributor.

7. Review and currency

7.1 Content is reviewed before publication and again when the evidence or a regulatory position changes.

7.2 Where a page shows a review date, that is the date it was last substantively reviewed. Where it shows none, none should be inferred, and we do not display an automatically generated date to create an impression of freshness.

7.3 A material change to a page's clinical content requires the page to be reviewed again. A page is not treated as still reviewed on the strength of a review that predates its current wording.

8. Sourcing and quality of evidence

8.1 Sources are preferred in roughly this order:

1. Recognised clinical practice guidelines and regulator publications
2. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
3. Randomised controlled trials
4. Good clinical reviews
5. Smaller or observational studies, where nothing better exists

8.2 We prefer original and authoritative sources over commercial skincare websites, which are not sources.

8.3 We do not manufacture citations. Where a source cannot be located or verified, the claim is weakened or removed. Where a primary text could not be obtained and we have relied on a secondary summary, the internal register records that limitation rather than presenting the secondary source as the primary.

8.4 Where a claim rests on a single study, the page says so and describes what the study did.

9. Regulatory content

9.1 Statements about the regulatory status of an ingredient in Singapore are attributed to the publishing regulator and are dated.

9.2 Where an ingredient is available over the counter in other countries but not in Singapore, the page says so, because readers arrive having read overseas material.

9.3 We do not resolve an unsettled regulatory question by choosing the more convenient reading. Where a position is unsettled, it is recorded as unsettled.

10. Contact

Version 2.0 · In force from 4 September 2026.

We review this Policy whenever our editorial practice changes, or the relationship between the content and the shop changes, and otherwise once a year.