Syllabus — One-Semester Survey
Fifteen weeks. General education, first-year seminar, or an elective open to any major. No science prerequisite. No code, no math beyond percentages.
You cannot teach forty-four chapters in fifteen weeks and you should not try. This syllabus covers twenty-four core chapters in full and designates twenty as optional — available for extra credit, for student-led sessions, for reading over a break, and for the students who get interested and want more. Say which is which on day one. A survey that pretends to be comprehensive teaches students that they have seen the field, which is the one impression this book is designed to prevent.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the term, a student who has done the work will be able to:
- State any peptide claim in evaluable form — with a population and an endpoint — and explain why a claim stated without those is not evaluable.
- Apply the four-tier rating (✅ ⚠️ ❌ 🔬) to a claim they have never seen before, with a date and a falsification condition. This is the outcome the course exists for.
- Describe an evidence base by design rather than by count — trial type, population, endpoint, comparator, duration, replication, and what is conspicuously absent.
- Distinguish the two kinds of ❌ — evidence absent versus evidence present and negative — and say which represents the stronger state of knowledge.
- Convert a relative risk figure to an absolute one, or state that the absolute figure was not reported.
- Identify a surrogate endpoint and explain what accepting it assumes.
- Explain why regulatory status is not evidence, in both directions, and name the five distinct meanings of "not approved."
- Produce and maintain a five-to-ten-compound Evidence Dossier, including honest blanks and a specific field 12 for every entry.
- Frame a verdict as a question a clinician could actually answer (Chapter 39).
Core and optional chapters
Core — assigned, assessed, and taught (24): 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 29, 30, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44
Optional — available, not assessed (20): 3, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 42, 43
Why these. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 are the method and cannot be cut under any circumstances. 8 is the book's reference implementation of a full evaluation; 17 is its mirror image with the same procedure and the opposite result; the two together are the course's central contrast. 19 adds the risk layer that is independent of whether a molecule works. 37 is where the method becomes a table students can read. 40 is the capstone. The rest of the core is chosen for breadth across parts and for proximity to what a general audience has actually encountered.
Two optional chapters worth promoting if you have room: 22, because it is the cleanest available demonstration that a confirmed mechanism does not imply an outcome, and 11, because insulin is the century-old counterexample to every "peptides are new" assumption in the room.
Week-by-week
| Wk | Chapters | Also assigned | Dossier milestone | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1, 2 | Appendix B (skim), Appendix I | Choose 5–10 compounds; field 1 | Compound list due (ungraded, but binding) |
| 2 | 4 | Appendix C §C.1–C.2 | Fields 2, 3, 4 | Reading check |
| 3 | 5 (two sessions) | Appendix D | Field 5 begun on one compound | Worked evaluation #1 (from Appendix H) |
| 4 | 6 | Appendix F | Field 12 for all compounds — collected and held by instructor | Field-12 submission (graded complete/incomplete) |
| 5 | 7, 8 | Appendix C §C.5 (the calibration entry) | Field 5 in earnest | Claim-evaluation assignment #1 |
| 6 | 10, 12 | — | Field 6 — first ratings, dated | Rating workshop, in class |
| 7 | 14, 15 | — | Fields 7, 8 | Reading check |
| 8 | 17, 19 | Appendix H (two more) | Field 9; field 10 quality line | Claim-evaluation assignment #2 |
| 9 | — | Review session | Dossier checkpoint 1 — fields 1–9, all compounds | Midterm exam (Parts I–III) |
| 10 | 21, 24 | — | Additional ratings under Rule 6 | Discussion post |
| 11 | 29, 30 | Appendix E | Field 10 continued | Reading check |
| 12 | 34, 38 | Appendix G | Field 10 completed | Claim-evaluation assignment #3 |
| 13 | 37 | Appendix A | Compare your field 6 against Appendix A — document every disagreement | Disagreement memo (one page) |
| 14 | 39, 41 | — | Field 11, including the clinician-question line | Role-play exercise (ungraded) |
| 15 | 40, 44 | Appendix C §C.6 | Dossier due; drift statement required | Practical evaluation exam (open book) |
Notes on the table.
- Week 3 gets two sessions. One on vocabulary — population, endpoint, comparator, design, duration, replication — and one on application. If your calendar has a flexible session anywhere, spend it here.
- Week 4's field-12 collection is not busywork. You are holding a fixed record of what each student said, before investment, would change their mind. You hand it back in week 13 and it does more teaching than any lecture in the course. See Where Students Get Stuck, struggle 10.
- Week 13's disagreement memo is the highest-yield single assignment on this syllabus. Students compare their own dated ratings against the book's and write one page on every mismatch, arguing either that they were wrong or that the book was. Both are acceptable answers. Grade the reasoning.
- The final assessment is the practical evaluation exam, not the final exam. The final exam in this guide is weighted to Parts IV–VIII, most of which this syllabus treats as optional. The practical exam is method-only and open-book, which is the right instrument here.
Grading
| Component | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence Dossier (capstone) | 35% | Graded with the dossier rubric. Checkpoint at week 9 is 8 of the 35. |
| Claim-evaluation assignments (3) | 18% | 6% each; claim-evaluation rubric |
| Midterm exam | 15% | Parts I–III |
| Practical evaluation exam | 15% | Open book; three constructed sources |
| Disagreement memo (week 13) | 7% | Reasoning only; agreement with the book is not the standard |
| Participation and discussion | 10% | Participation rubric — includes changing one's mind on evidence as a graded behavior |
| Reading checks and field-12 submission | — | Complete/incomplete; gate the dossier grade rather than adding weight |
The grading principle, stated in the syllabus students receive: a well-reasoned ⚠️ that the instructor disagrees with outscores a ✅ that happens to match the book.
Course policy: no dosing, protocols, or sourcing
The book contains none, deliberately, and neither will your work in this course. Submissions must not include dosing figures, regimens or protocols, sourcing information, vendor names, or links to sellers. Field 4 of the dossier asks about route and duration of action, not about regimens, and the distinction is worth ten minutes of class time in week 2, before the first submission.
Anything invented for illustration must be labeled [constructed teaching example]. An unlabeled
invented source is not a formatting error; it is the failure this course exists to prevent.
No student will be asked to disclose whether they use any compound discussed in this course. Dossier compounds may be chosen privately. Discussion stays on claims, never on anyone's choices.
What to cut if you run short
In this order, and stop as soon as you have recovered the time:
- Week 11 (29, 30) — move both to optional. Cosmetic peptides survive well as a single 📊 rating exercise using Appendix A; the pharmacy chapter survives as an Appendix E handout.
- Chapter 24 — cut from week 10, leaving 21 alone. Keep 21; oxytocin is where the mechanism-vs-outcome lesson is most vivid for a general audience.
- Chapter 41 — merge into week 15 with 44 as a single discussion session.
- Chapter 15 — cut, keeping 14. Secretagogues can be introduced in one paragraph inside the growth hormone session.
- Week 14's role-play — shorten to a single demonstration rather than a full round.
Never cut, under any pressure: Chapters 5 and 6, week 3's second session, the week-4 field-12 collection, or the week-13 disagreement memo. Compressing Chapter 5 does not save time; it moves the time into your office hours and lowers every subsequent grade in the course.
Related: How to Teach This Book · Where Students Get Stuck · Two-Semester Sequence · Professional Development · Evidence Dossier Rubric · Claim Evaluation Rubric · Participation Rubric · Midterm Exam · Practical Evaluation Exam