Chapter 6 — Exercises
Items marked † have worked solutions in Appendix M.
A. Recall
6.1 Name the five stages of the hype pipeline and state what information is lost at each transition.
6.2 † List the five reasons a testimonial is near-worthless as evidence of efficacy.
6.3 What does the "research chemical — not for human consumption" label accomplish? Give three distinct functions.
6.4 Define epistemic laundering and give the peptide-market example from §6.4.
6.5 † In §6.7's incentive diagram, who benefits from the sentence "the evidence is currently insufficient to say"?
6.6 State the five questions of the sixty-second first response.
B. The pipeline
6.7 Take a preclinical finding — any real one you can find — and write out how it would look at each of the five stages. What is lost at each step?
6.8 † §6.2 argues that the most honest sentence in the whole pipeline is written by the original researchers and is the first thing lost. Find a real preclinical paper on any compound, locate its limitations paragraph, and compare it to how the finding is described on a non-scientific page.
6.9 The chapter argues the pipeline runs on good compounds too, citing semaglutide. Describe how semaglutide moved through stages 4 and 5, and identify what a reader digging back to stage 1 finds that differs from the BPC-157 case.
C. Testimonials
6.10 † Someone reports that a compound healed an eight-month shoulder injury in three weeks. Working through §6.3's five mechanisms one at a time, explain what each would predict — without suggesting the person is lying.
6.11 Redraw the 100-person diagram with your own plausible numbers for a compound that genuinely works well. Does the visible record still overstate it? What does that tell you?
6.12 When someone reports no effect, a common response is "wrong source, wrong dose, or not long enough." Explain why this response is sometimes correct and always functions as an unfalsifiability device.
D. The gray market's information architecture
6.13 † A vendor page contains: links to animal studies, a purity certificate, a dosage calculator, bacteriostatic water as a related product, customer reviews, and a "we make no medical claims" disclaimer. Analyze what each element contributes and what the assembly communicates.
6.14 Design a page that would sell a research reagent to actual laboratories. List what would be present and what would be absent. Compare to §6.4's description.
6.15 Is the "research chemical" formulation dishonest? Argue both sides carefully. Distinguish legal accuracy from communicative effect.
E. Media
6.16 † Write two headlines about the same peptide finding — one in the miracle register, one in the menace register — both technically accurate. Then write the honest version and count the words.
6.17 §6.5 argues the menace register does specific damage. Explain the mechanism, and then argue against the chapter: is there a case for the dismissive framing?
6.18 Why can't the honest version of a trial result be a headline? Is this fixable? Propose a change and identify who would have to adopt it.
F. Analyzing the three cases
6.19 † For BPC-157, NAD+ precursors, and GHK-Cu, state in one sentence each: what is genuinely true, and where exactly the distortion enters.
6.20 NAD+ precursors and BPC-157 are in different epistemic positions despite both being ⚠️/❌. Explain the difference and why one is "a stronger epistemic position and a worse commercial one."
6.21 For GHK-Cu, the decisive question is delivery. Using Chapter 4's filter, state what a manufacturer would have to demonstrate.
6.22 † Find a fourth compound at some stage of this cycle. Write the same three-part analysis: what is genuinely true, what is overstated, and where the specific distortion enters.
G. Why intelligent people
6.23 §6.9 argues that "do your own research" fails specifically in this environment. Explain the mechanism, and identify the circumstances under which the advice would be good.
6.24 † Explain why mechanistic understanding increases susceptibility. Connect it to Chapter 2's seven-step gap. Then name the procedural defense.
6.25 Institutional skepticism applied asymmetrically hands credibility to the least accountable actor. Describe how you would check whether you are doing this.
6.26 Motivated reasoning is invisible from inside. Describe a procedure — not an attitude — that would detect it in yourself.
H. "Explain this to a friend"
6.27 † Your friend sends you a testimonial video and asks what you think. Respond in a way that is accurate, does not insult the person in the video, and does not sound like a lecture.
6.28 Explain to someone why "no one is lying" and "this is misleading" can both be true of a peptide vendor's website.
6.29 A friend says: "The mainstream just dismisses this stuff because they haven't looked at the research." Respond honestly — including conceding what is true in it.
I. Judgment
6.30 §6.7 says this book has its own biases, including that the ❌ verdict is "more intellectually satisfying to write than it should be." Do you find that admission credible or performative? What would distinguish them?
6.31 † Rank the five pipeline stages by how much intervention there would improve public understanding. Justify your ranking and identify who could actually intervene at your top choice.
6.32 Someone argues the gray market is net positive: it gives people access to compounds regulators are too slow to approve, and the alternative is suffering while waiting. Argue against this position as strongly as you can, then argue for it.
J. Evidence Dossier extension
6.33 † Write Field 12 (What would change my mind) for every peptide in your dossier. Include the "what would NOT change my mind" line for each. Date it and do not revise it.
6.34 For at least one compound you are personally invested in, check whether your falsifier is genuinely achievable. If the only thing that would change your mind is a study nobody will run, say so explicitly.
6.35 Run the sixty-second first response on three sources about any compound in your dossier. Note which question each failed at, and how long it actually took.