Editorial Policy: How We Research, Write and Correct

· By , Editorial

This page explains how content on The Secret Trends is produced. It is written to be checked, so it describes what we actually do rather than what sounds reassuring.

Who writes these articles

Articles are published under The Secret Trends as an organizational author. We do not publish under individual bylines.

Previously, articles on this site carried individual author names with stated roles and professional credentials. Those personas did not correspond to verifiable, accountable individuals, and we have removed them. We have not replaced them with different names, biographies, photographs, qualifications or social profiles. Where an article's byline once implied a named expert, it now correctly attributes the work to the organization that published it.

How we research

Our default method is source-based desk research. The labelling standard below is the standard we apply to newly written and newly revised articles under our current editorial-recovery workflow. A large amount of older content on this site predates this standard: legacy articles may not yet label or link every claim this way, and some contain defects this policy exists to eliminate. We are auditing and revising legacy articles progressively, and if you find a problem on a page we have not reached yet, please report it via the corrections address below and we will prioritise it.

The standard, for content written or revised under it:

  • Manufacturer claims — specifications, prices and feature lists taken from a manufacturer's own published material are labelled as manufacturer claims and, in revised articles, linked to the page they came from with the date we accessed it. Legacy articles may not yet do this consistently.
  • Independently reported findings — where another publication has tested a product, we cite that publication by name and date, and we note when its testing is old enough that it may no longer describe the current product.
  • Regulatory, medical, dental and safety claims — in content written or revised under this standard, these are sourced to the relevant authority, professional body or peer-reviewed literature. A manufacturer is an acceptable source for what a product is; it is not an acceptable source for whether a product works, and revised content does not use it that way.
  • Editorial judgement — our own reasoned conclusions from the evidence are labelled as such, so they are not mistaken for measurements.
  • Unverified — where a figure circulates widely but we cannot trace it to a primary source, we say we could not verify it instead of repeating it.

Hands-on testing

We do not claim to have tested a product unless testing genuinely happened, and where it did, the article states who tested it, over what period, and how. Articles that are desk research say plainly at the top that they are desk research and list what that means we cannot tell you — such as long-term reliability, real-world battery life or noise levels.

Some older articles on this site contained first-person testing narratives that did not reflect real testing. We are removing those claims as we revise each article. If you find one we have not reached yet, please tell us and we will prioritise it.

How AI is used

Articles on this site are drafted and researched with substantial AI assistance, operated by a small editorial team. Much of the site's older content was generated with limited human review, which is how the defects described on this page entered it. Under the current recovery workflow, AI-assisted drafting does not change the sourcing standard — a claim still has to trace to a real, checkable source, and a source that does not exist is treated as a defect, not a detail — and articles revised under this workflow receive human editorial review against their source list before republication. We do not claim that every legacy article has already received that review; the progressive audit described above is how it gets there.

How we are funded

The site is funded by affiliate commissions earned when readers buy through some of our links. Those links are marked, and pages carrying them display an affiliate disclosure. Affiliate relationships influence which commercial products we cover — we generally write about products we can earn a commission on. They are not evidence of product quality, and an affiliate link on a page is never a claim that the product works. Under the current standard, what we say about a product has to trace to labelled sources regardless of the commission, and several of our revised reviews tell specific readers not to buy the product at all.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to fix it rather than defend it. Email info@thesecrettrends.com with the URL and the specific claim. When we correct a material factual error we update the article and its stated revision date. When a revision materially changes an article's conclusions, we describe what changed rather than editing silently.

What we will not do

  • Invent authors, credentials, qualifications, testing panels, customer experiences, quotations or statistics
  • Present a manufacturer's marketing claim as an independent finding
  • Claim hands-on testing that did not occur
  • Publish a precise-sounding figure we cannot source