Methodology
How The Verdict Room tests and scores a supplement
We are a small independent review desk in Newport, Rhode Island, publishing since 2019. We buy the products we write about at retail, run them for a fixed period, read the label against the published research, and score them on eight categories with fixed weights. This page explains exactly what that means, including the parts we cannot do.
Who writes these reviews
The Verdict Room is published by Verdict Room Media, LLC, 46 Thames Street, Suite 3, Newport, RI 02840. Reviews are researched and drafted by our research desk and reviewed before publication by Nolan Ferreira, MS, CNS, our nutrition science editor, who checks every claim about an ingredient against the source it came from and removes anything the source does not support. If a sentence in one of our reviews implies a supplement treats a medical condition, it does not survive that pass. Reach the desk at editor@boosterxtreviews.com.
How we buy
We pay retail. No product on this site was sent to us free by a manufacturer, and we do not accept sponsored reviews, paid placements or edits requested by a brand. Manufacturers are not told in advance that a review is coming and do not see it before it publishes. That is not a courtesy we withhold to be difficult, it is the only way an eight week run means anything.
How we run a product
Our standard test is eight weeks with at least two people from the desk, taking the product exactly as the label directs, logging four measures every week: the primary outcome the product is sold for, energy, sleep and any side effect. We record where each tester started before the first dose, because gradual change is exactly the kind that memory rewrites. We stop early only if a tester reports something that warrants stopping.
What that is not: it is not blinded, it is not placebo controlled, and two people cannot tell you what a supplement does across a population. We publish first hand notes because they surface things a label never shows you, like how a capsule sits on an empty stomach or how the first week actually feels. We do not treat them as proof, and they are one input into one of eight scored categories.
The scorecard
Every product gets scored out of 5 in eight categories. The weights below are fixed in advance and applied identically across every review on this site, so scores are comparable between products.
| Category | Weight | What we look at |
|---|---|---|
| Effectiveness | 20% | Reported outcomes in our own run, weighted against the size and quality of the human research behind the actives |
| Label transparency | 15% | Are doses published per ingredient, is the form of each nutrient named, is there third party testing on a named lot |
| Value for money | 15% | Cost per day at the cheapest honest bundle, against what comparable formulas charge |
| Tolerability | 15% | Side effects in our run and the share of buyer reviews reporting none |
| Speed of onset | 10% | How long before a typical user notices anything, measured against what the marketing implies |
| Ease of use | 10% | Dose complexity, timing rules, taste and swallowability |
| Refund and support | 10% | Length of the guarantee, whether opened product is covered, how the refund is claimed, and what buyers say happened when they tried |
| Repurchase intent | 5% | Share of reviewers who bought a second time, plus our own answer to whether we would |
Two rules sit above the scorecard. A product that hides its doses inside a proprietary blend cannot score above 3.5 on label transparency, no matter how good the ingredients are. And a product whose refund policy excludes opened bottles cannot score above 3.0 on refund and support, because a guarantee you can only claim on an unopened box is a returns policy wearing a costume.
How we read buyer reviews
The community rating we publish is an aggregate of buyer reviews collected from the seller's own review stream and from public consumer review platforms over a stated date range, which appears in each article. We count the whole set rather than the flattering part, we report the one and two star share explicitly, and we read the low ratings for pattern rather than volume. What we look for in the negative reviews is the failure mode: disappointment, a side effect, or a fight over money. Those three tell you very different things about a company.
Reviews submitted through the form on our own articles are moderated by hand and do not feed the aggregate score, because we cannot verify a purchase behind a web form and an unverifiable rating should not move a number readers rely on.
What we never do
- We do not run laboratory assays. We are a review desk, not a testing lab, and when we report a purity or potency figure it is because a named third party produced it, not us.
- We do not diagnose, prescribe or offer medical advice, and we do not publish before and after photographs.
- We do not take payment to change a score, and we have never removed a critical review section at a brand's request.
- We do not invent urgency. No countdown timers, no invented stock levels, no discount percentages we did not read off the seller's own page.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, email editor@boosterxtreviews.com with the article and the sentence. Factual errors are corrected quickly and the change is noted in the updated date at the top of the article. If a manufacturer changes a formula, a price or a guarantee, the review is updated to match and the old figures are not quietly deleted from our records.
How we make money
Through affiliate links. When a review recommends checking a price and you click through and buy, the seller pays us a commission. Your price is identical whether you use our link or type the address yourself. No brand pays for a score, a position or a favourable line, and the commission rate on a product plays no part in what we write. Our full affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in detail. We are not the official site for any product we review, including Booster XT, and we have no role in taking your order or filling it.
Read the review this methodology produced: our Booster XT review, or the companion piece on Booster XT complaints and refunds.