How We Source
The hierarchy of evidence this site applies, what we refuse to cite, and how we handle the questions the research has not answered.
We cite primary documents first: statutes, regulatory decisions, trial registries and peer-reviewed research. Clinic marketing is never a source of fact. Where the evidence is weak or contested, the page says so rather than choosing the version that reads more confidently.
Why this page exists
Ibogaine is a subject where the loudest sources are the least disinterested. Much of what circulates about it, from success rates to safety records to mechanisms stated as settled, originates in the marketing of providers who are paid if you believe it, and is then repeated until it acquires the texture of fact.
Naming what we cite, and what we refuse to cite, is the only way a reader can check whether we have done the work.
The hierarchy
Primary legal texts
Statutes, scheduling decisions, regulatory notices and court rulings, read in the original and linked. Not a summary of the law. The law itself.
Peer-reviewed research
Indexed on PubMed or PMC, cited with author, year and identifier. Case reports are labelled as case reports, not as evidence of effect.
Trial registries
Registered protocols and their status. A trial that is registered is not a trial that has reported, and we distinguish the two.
Institutional and field reporting
Public health bodies, NGOs, and named journalism. Used for context and for events, not to establish clinical fact.
What we do not cite as fact
- Clinic and retreat websites. They are the subject of our reporting, not a source for it. We may quote one to show what it claims; we never rest a statement of fact on it.
- Success rates without a denominator. A figure with no cohort, no follow-up period and no definition of success is a marketing claim wearing a number.
- Aggregated content farms. Sites that rewrite other sites add no verification and often launder an error into apparent consensus.
- Anonymous forum posts, as evidence. They are valuable as lived experience, and we treat them as exactly that, never as data.
How we handle what is not known
On this subject, the honest answer is frequently that nobody knows yet. We write that sentence rather than avoiding the question.
Three habits follow from it.
We separate mechanism from outcome. That ibogaine acts on a given receptor is not evidence that it treats a given condition, and we do not let the first imply the second.
We give the size of the evidence. “One open-label study of fourteen participants” and “a randomised controlled trial” are not the same claim, and a reader is entitled to know which they are reading.
We date the state of knowledge. A page that says what the research supports says when it was checked, so that a reader in two years knows what they are holding.
Verification and freshness
Pages whose subject changes carry a visible verification date.
| Section | Re-verified every | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Legality | 6 months | Scheduling and state legislation move fast |
| Treatment | 12 months | Costs, protocols and provider practice shift |
| Science | On new evidence | Re-checked when a trial reports |
Past its window, a page is flagged as overdue on its own byline. We would rather show you a stale date than an unearned one.
Links
External links go to the source, not to an intermediary summarising it. Where a paper sits behind a paywall we link the abstract and name the open-access mirror if one exists.
We do not use nofollow to punish sources we disagree with, and we take no
payment for any link, in either direction.