Our Editorial Standards: How SOAH Verifies Every Claim We Make
Every brand that publishes content is, technically, asking you to trust it. Almost none of them explain how that content actually gets researched, checked, or corrected when it turns out to be wrong. We would rather be the exception than ask for that trust without earning it.
This page exists because we make claims across this site, about water, about hair and skin, about our own products, and a reader has no real way to evaluate those claims without knowing how we arrived at them. So here is exactly how.
We do not publish a statistic, a study result or a certification claim unless we can trace it to a source we have actually opened and read ourselves. Where we cannot verify something, we say so directly in the article rather than leaving it out silently or rounding it up to sound more impressive. When we find an error in our own past content, we correct it and note that we did.
How We Source a Claim
Before a number, a study result or a regulatory detail appears in a SOAH article, we trace it to a primary source, a government body, a standards organisation, a peer-reviewed or clinical source, or a company's own published data, and we link to it directly wherever the source is publicly accessible. We do not repeat a statistic because another website used it; we open the underlying source ourselves. Where a figure comes from a specialist third party rather than an official body, such as a water treatment company's own testing, we say so explicitly rather than presenting it with the same weight as a government standard.
What We Do When We Cannot Verify Something
Not every claim can be traced to a source solid enough to publish with confidence. When that happens, our standard is to say so in the article itself, in plain language, rather than quietly omitting the topic or rounding an uncertain figure into something that sounds more definitive than it is. You will find sections in our articles that read, in effect, "we could not verify this," because that is more useful to you than a confident-sounding guess.
How We Handle Our Own Product Claims
We hold our own marketing to the same standard we apply to external sources, which has meant removing claims from our own product pages when we could not substantiate them, including specific percentage statistics and certification language we could not back with documentation. Where we do not currently hold a certification, such as NSF/ANSI 177, we say so directly rather than let a competitor comparison or a certification explainer pass without mentioning our own status.
How We Handle Competitor Information
When an article compares SOAH to another brand, we cite that brand's own published information, or a named independent source such as a regulator's public notice, rather than characterising a competitor's product from memory or assumption. We aim to apply the same scrutiny to our own claims in the same article, in the same section, not in a separate, easier-to-skip disclaimer.
✔ Every factual claim traces to a source we opened ourselves
→ Not a secondhand repetition of another site's number
✔ What we could not verify is stated plainly in the article
→ Not omitted or rounded to sound more certain
✔ Our own product claims meet the same bar as external claims
→ Including saying so when we lack a certification
✔ Errors get corrected, and we say when we corrected them
→ Not silently edited without acknowledgement
Who Writes and Reviews SOAH's Content
Articles on this site are published under the SOAH Editorial Team byline, reflecting that this is a collective editorial process rather than a single unnamed author, with claims checked against primary sources before publication rather than after a reader flags a problem.
| Practice | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Primary sourcing | We open and read the actual source, not a summary of it |
| Uncertainty disclosure | Stated directly in the relevant article, not hidden in a footer |
| Self-scrutiny | Our own product claims are checked to the same standard as anyone else's |
| Corrections | Made openly, with the fact that a correction happened stated where relevant |
Why This Page Exists at All
A brand publishing educational content about its own product category has an obvious incentive problem, and no amount of well-written copy fully resolves that on its own. What we can control is making our process checkable rather than asking you to simply trust the outcome. If an article on this site makes a claim you want to verify, the source should be linked directly in that article; if it is not, that is worth telling us.
This page itself is not neutral, we wrote it, and we have an obvious interest in you trusting our content. The most honest thing we can do about that is make the standard specific and checkable rather than vague and reassuring. If you ever find an article on this site that does not meet what is written here, that is a legitimate problem worth raising with us directly, not a gap we would want left quietly standing.
FAQs About SOAH's Editorial Process
Does SOAH pay for or influence independent reviews of its products?
No. Content on this blog is written and published by the SOAH Editorial Team, and is separate from any third-party review coverage of our products elsewhere.
What happens if SOAH publishes something factually wrong?
We correct it directly in the article. Several past corrections on this site, including removing unsubstantiated statistics and certification language from our own product pages, are reflected in how our current content is written.
Does SOAH hold NSF/ANSI 177 certification?
No, not currently, and our product and editorial content says so directly rather than implying otherwise.
How can I check a source cited in a SOAH article?
Every factual claim that has a public source is linked directly within the relevant article. If a link is missing or broken, please let us know.
Final Thoughts
We do not expect this page alone to earn your trust, standards written by the party being held to them are inherently a little self-serving. What we hope it does is give you something concrete to hold us to, article by article, rather than a general promise to take on faith.
See the Standard in Practice
Read any article on The Wellness Edit and check the sourcing for yourself.
If something doesn't meet this standard, we would rather hear about it than have it stand.
