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Our sources
How Body Lab chooses, ranks and cites its sources: which kinds of publication are preferred, why no digital identifier is published without verification, and how to report an error.
An explanation without a source is an opinion. Every content page on Body Lab displays the list of work it relies on, and that list is checked when the site is compiled: a reference cited in the text but missing from the bibliography blocks publication.
This page explains how those sources are chosen, how they are ranked and how they are written.
What is preferred
A single study, however well conducted, is almost never enough to establish a fact. Body Lab therefore favours work that brings several results together.
- Review articles and meta-analyses, which gather and compare several studies on the same question.
- Position statements from scientific organisations and learned societies, which reflect a professional consensus at a given date.
- Reference textbooks in anatomy and physiology, for stable structural descriptions.
- Original studies, as a last resort, when a topic is too recent or too specific to have been synthesised.
An original study is never presented on its own as general proof. When one is cited, the page states who it was carried out on, for how long and under what conditions.
The hierarchy of levels of evidence
Sources do not all carry the same weight, and the weight also depends on the question asked. An anatomical description and a claim about the effect of training are not demonstrated in the same way.
- For an anatomical structure: reference textbooks and functional anatomy work take precedence. What varies from person to person is flagged as such.
- For a physiological mechanism: review articles take precedence, supported by the experimental work that established the mechanism.
- For an effect of training or nutrition: meta-analyses and controlled trials take precedence. Uncontrolled observations and results from animal models are mentioned as such, never transposed directly to humans.
The level of evidence behind a claim is then translated into one of the four levels of certainty displayed on the page — established, probable, uncertain or teaching simplification. How those levels work is set out in the methodology.
How a reference is written
Every reference carries at least the author, the year, the exact title and the publication source. Those four elements are enough to find a piece of work in any bibliographic database.
Note
Why no digital identifier is displayed
A digital publication identifier — a DOI — or a web address gives the appearance of verifiability, but a wrong identifier leads to another document, or to nothing at all. A false link is more misleading than no link at all.
Body Lab therefore publishes no identifier and no address until it has been checked one by one. The field exists in the document format and stays empty by default. The author, year, title and source citation, on the other hand, is always enough to find the source.
That rule applies to figures too. No numerical value is published unless it is supported by a reference declared on the same page.
What you will not find in our sources
- No reference reconstructed from memory or generated automatically without verification.
- No citation of an article based on its abstract alone when the claim concerns a methodological detail.
- No commercial, advertising or promotional source presented as evidence.
- No extrapolation from a result obtained in a very particular population to the general population.
Reporting an error
An error can survive: a source misread, a simplification that has become misleading, a result made obsolete by a recent publication. Reports are useful and are acted on.
A report always follows the same path. The page concerned moves to the "due for review" state. The point raised is checked against the original source. If the error is confirmed, the page is corrected, its last review date is updated and the version number of the document is incremented. If the point turns out to be a scientific disagreement rather than an error, the page is adjusted to reflect that disagreement rather than settling it.
A useful report gives the address of the page, the exact passage and, where possible, the source that contradicts the claim.
Limit
Reporting channel
The editorial contact address will be published on this page before the site opens publicly. No address is given for now: publishing a channel that would go unread would be worse than publishing nothing.
This section will be completed at the same time as the legal notice.
Put it into practice in Shapier
See the sources Shapier relies on
Looking up the sources used by Shapier happens on Shapier; Body Lab only explains here how its own references are chosen, ranked and written.
See the sources Shapier relies onBody Lab explains; Shapier lets you act and track.
Read next
- Editorial methodologyHow a Body Lab page is written, checked, translated and reviewed: the stages of the editorial chain, the information every document must carry, the levels of certainty, the style rules and the health policy.Described without a scene
- Shapier editorial teamAll Body Lab content is signed collectively by the Shapier editorial team. This page describes its role, its area of competence, its verification method and its declarations of interest.Described without a scene
- About Body LabBody Lab is the educational layer of the Shapier ecosystem: it explains what happens in the body when you move, train, eat and recover. This page describes its mission, its place and its limits.Described without a scene
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Trust and method
Author
equipe-editoriale-shapier
Editorial review
Thanh Chau
Scientific review
Pending
Published on
August 2, 2026
Reviewed on August 2, 2026
Next review due August 2, 2027
Educational content. Body Lab does not diagnose and does not replace professional advice.
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