Methods
Every Merriwell bulletin has a method section with its own sources, dates and definitions. The standards below apply to all of them.
Sources
- Company pages. Prices, plan terms, warranties and policies, read from each company's own website on a stated date.
- Lab reports and certificates of analysis. Read as the company posts them. We record which tests a report shows, which lab issued it and its date. We don't log in to lab portals or request documents that are not public.
- Labels. Supplement and nutrition facts, read from the product page or its label image.
Standards
- A value we could not find on a public page is left blank with the reason, and never estimated.
- Prices are list prices before coupons, in US dollars, on the date stated.
- Every percentage has its sample size next to it, rounded to one decimal place.
- Some bulletins report totals across companies without naming them. The method section says when.
- Definitions and exclusions are written out in each bulletin's method section.
- Every chart and table has a CSV file on the bulletin page.
- Bulletins describe what companies publish. They make no claims about what a product does for anyone's health.
Updates
Prices and pages change. Each bulletin shows the date its pages were read, and bulletins are refreshed on the schedule stated in them.