Trial regimen, approved label, or forum protocol

An approved drug label is the product of a formal, adversarial review. A regulator's statisticians and clinicians pick apart a manufacturer's trial data before anything gets published, and the resulting label is legally binding on what the manufacturer can claim.

A clinical trial regimen is the dose and schedule used in a peer-reviewed study. It has been through review board oversight and, for published results, peer review. A single trial carries far less weight than a regulator concluding a compound is safe and effective for general use, and a phase 2 dose-finding study carries less still. Results can fail to replicate. Dosing that looked promising in one trial sometimes falls apart in a larger phase 3 study.

A site-sourced or forum protocol has usually been through neither. It may be well-intentioned and reflect real experience, though nobody without a stake in the outcome has checked it, and any adverse events that never got reported back to the author simply do not appear in it.

Unverified information still has its place. Plenty of now-standard practices began as anecdote before anyone studied them properly. The point is narrower: the confidence you place in a number should track where the number came from, which is why this site tags every entry and shows the grade alongside the dose.