Sources & Methodology

Primary sources we monitor

How we use these sources

Each scrape run pulls fresh content from the sources above, deduplicates against what we've already seen, and runs the resulting items through a multi-stage filter:

1. Keyword pre-filter keeps items that plausibly relate to psychedelic research, law, scheduling, trials, or access — most raw ingest noise is dropped here.
2. Relevance scoring ranks what survives for policy and research readers (e.g. agencies, dockets, trials, and literature), with stricter bars for the daily briefing.
3. Editorial pass (where applicable) adds headline, tags, and short takeaways; low-signal items are not published.
4. Long-form analysis (the /briefing archive) is only produced for on-mission, high-signal items.
5. Evergreen guides such as the research landscape and our law & policy guide are updated on a rolling basis as the field moves.

Relevance scoring methodology

Not every item that mentions psychedelics is worth publishing. Our scoring pipeline assigns each ingested item a weighted relevance score based on several factors:

• Source tier weight. Primary regulatory sources (Federal Register final rules, FDA approval letters, DEA scheduling notices) receive the highest tier weight. Peer-reviewed research from PubMed and OpenAlex receives the next tier. News aggregators and media monitoring receive the lowest weight and must clear a higher relevance threshold before publication.
• Topical alignment. Items are scored against a taxonomy of core topics: controlled-substance scheduling, clinical trial results, state and federal legislation, FDA regulatory actions, institutional research programs, and patient-access pathways. Items touching multiple core topics score higher.
• Novelty detection. We deduplicate against prior items using title similarity, entity extraction, and docket/trial identifiers. A Federal Register notice about a scheduling action that we already covered as a proposed rule is flagged as an update, not a new item — it appears as a follow-up rather than a duplicate briefing.
• Recency and urgency. Time-sensitive items — open public comment periods, scheduling effective dates, trial enrollment windows — receive a recency boost that decays after the relevant deadline passes.

Items that clear the scoring threshold are queued for editorial review. The daily briefing uses a stricter cutoff than the research landscape page, so lower-signal items may appear in the broader archive without generating a standalone analysis.

What we exclude and why

Maintaining editorial focus means actively excluding categories that dilute signal for our audience:

• Recreational-use content. Trip reports, dosing guides, and harm-reduction material for non-clinical contexts. We link to credible harm-reduction organizations like DanceSafe and the Zendo Project where appropriate, but do not produce our own recreational-use content.
• Supplement and nootropic marketing. Products marketed as "legal psychedelics" or mushroom supplement blends that do not contain scheduled substances. These occupy a different regulatory and evidence category.
• Unattributed claims. Social media posts, anonymous forum reports, and press releases without identifiable primary sources. If we cannot trace a claim to a named agency, published paper, court filing, or on-record statement, it does not enter the pipeline.
• Financial analysis and stock picks. We track publicly traded psychedelic companies for regulatory context (e.g. FDA decisions affecting Compass Pathways, Lykos, or atai Life Sciences), but do not provide investment analysis, price targets, or portfolio recommendations.

Editorial standards

Independent research commentary — not medical, legal, or investment advice. Every item points to primary or clearly attributed sources so you can verify claims. Specific standards we hold ourselves to:

• Primary-source provenance. Every factual claim in a briefing must trace to a named primary source — a Federal Register docket number, a PubMed ID, a court case citation, or an on-record statement. Secondary reporting is cited as secondary, not laundered into fact.
• Limits-on-claims language. We distinguish between completed Phase III trials and early-phase signals, between FDA approval and breakthrough-therapy designation, and between observational associations and causal findings. Headlines do not overstate the evidence level.
• Corrections policy. We publish corrections in the next scheduled run when material errors are identified. Corrections include what changed, why, and a timestamp. The original briefing is updated in place with a visible correction notice — we do not delete and republish.
• Conflict-of-interest disclosure. This site is independently operated. We do not accept payment from psychedelic companies, retreats, or therapy providers for coverage or placement. Tool pages that link to external directories are not affiliate or sponsored links.
• Review by Dr. Michael Teplitsky. Commentary and claim-review pages are reviewed by Dr. Michael Teplitsky. Briefings produced by the automated pipeline are editorially reviewed before publication on the daily analysis page.

Update cadence

The ingestion pipeline runs twice daily (10:00 AM and 5:00 PM ET). New items flow into the research landscape page continuously. Long-form news analyses at /briefing are published when high-signal items clear the editorial threshold — typically 3 to 7 new analyses per week. Evergreen reference pages (the law & policy guide, therapy guides, and tools) are reviewed and updated at least monthly, or sooner when a material regulatory or clinical development warrants it.

Get in touch

Found a factual error, want to suggest a source, or interested in syndication? Reply to any briefing email or use the feedback button on any page. You can also subscribe below for the daily digest.