A small publication about a quiet literature

How we started

Field Standard began in 2021 as a shared document between two people who kept having the same argument. Elena Ward had spent years as a university vivarium technician, caring for the animals inside experiments she wasn't allowed to design. Priya Sen was a science journalist who kept being assigned stories about the peptide of the moment. Between them sat the same frustration: the experiments measured one thing, and the headlines claimed another, and almost nobody was being paid to write down the difference.

The shared document was a running set of notes on the BPC-157 literature — which papers existed, which species they used, how many animals, who paid. We met most Tuesday mornings at a café on South Fourth Avenue in Ann Arbor, the kind of place where a two-hour occupancy of a corner table is tolerated if you keep ordering coffee. By winter the document had grown into what is now the Library: eight entries, each one shorter on certainty than anything else on the internet and, we thought, more useful for it.

Two decisions from that first year still structure the publication. The first was refusing advertising — all of it, categorically, before anyone had offered us any. A publication that explains why preclinical findings can't support human use cannot take money from anyone whose revenue depends on readers believing otherwise, and the cleanest way to prove that is to take money from no one at all. The second decision was that corrections would be public. Our first one came in March 2022: a Library entry had misstated which species a wound-healing study used. We appended the correction, noted it in the ledger, and left the original sentence struck through but legible. It stung. It was also the moment the publication started to feel real.

Not everything was tidy. In 2023 we parted ways with a contributor whose drafts kept reaching past the evidence — "promising" where the paper said "small and unblinded," "the research shows" where it showed something narrower. The disagreement was cordial and total. He thought our caution was a failure of nerve. We thought his confidence was the exact failure this publication was founded to correct. Both of us were probably a little right, and we kept the policy.

Five years on, we remain small on purpose. Six contributors, one studio above a bookbinder's shop, a corrections ledger we hope stays short and expect will not.

How we're funded

Field Standard carries no advertising, accepts no sponsorship, and participates in no affiliate arrangements of any kind. There is nothing to buy on this site and there never will be. The newsletter is free and will remain free.

Our operating costs — hosting, software, printing, the occasional interlibrary loan fee — are covered by reader contributions and by the founders' own funds. Readers who write to ask how to contribute receive a short reply with the details; we do not publish a storefront, a meter, or a membership tier, and no article has ever been withheld from anyone. If contributions ever fail to cover costs, the publication gets smaller, not more commercial.

Corrections and pitches

If you believe we have misstated a finding, misattributed a model, or gotten a date wrong, write to corrections@fieldstandard.review. Corrections we accept are appended to the article with a dated note and entered in the public ledger; the original text is never silently erased. Corrections we dispute receive a written reply explaining why.

If you want to write for us — a methods essay, a citation history, an evidence review — write to pitches@fieldstandard.review with two paragraphs: what you want to argue, and what you have read that supports it. We do not publish guest content written by anyone with a financial interest in any substance discussed.