What 'clinically tested' actually means
Three words that sell a lot of skincare and mean almost nothing on a label. Here is what to ask instead.
"Clinically tested" is on so many bottles that it has come to mean its opposite: usually, that no study worth publishing has been done. The phrase is unregulated in the United States, and even in markets that regulate cosmetic claims it sits in a gray zone — a claim about how the product was developed rather than what the study found.
What to look for instead
Two things.
First, a study description that names the design: was it placebo-controlled? Double-blind? How many participants and for how long? An eight-week study with twelve people and no control is not nothing, but it is far from "clinically proven."
Second, a citation you can read. Most legitimate cosmetic-science studies live in journals like the International Journal of Cosmetic Science or Skin Pharmacology and Physiology. If a brand cites their work, you can pull the paper and check the methods. If they don't, the work is either unpublished or doesn't exist.
What Sequence12 publishes
For every peptide we formulate with, the library entry lists an evidence grade (A, B, or C) reflecting the strength of the published literature — not our internal studies. We will not call our own product "clinically proven" until we have run the kind of study we'd be willing to publish.