Accuracy of beta-glucan analysis

It's my pleasure! I've definitely been pushing the same message for years. It's just many people are being misled by propaganda and faulty science, both on the Paul Stamets side and on the /r/MushroomSupplements side. That subreddit was started by a person who was banned from /r/Nootropics for shilling, and created that subreddit to push unfounded and misleading information at people. They constantly try and make people think I am this overlord misleading and silencing competitors on /r/Nootropics. It's been a thing for years now. You can see me arguing against there propaganda on some of those posts above. They constantly push Oriveda, who are the people really pushing these false and fake numbers on lion's mane. We have already proven their numbers are totally fake, and the lab they use to test erinacines and hericenones is a dry lab. It's a massive scam that they are bringing everyone into with false and misleading claims. However, they try and convince people it is ME that is scamming people. LOL. This is even though I am not the one making unfounded claims on our products, and I am totally open about the process we are having to go through to solve some of these analytical issues. It would be a lot easier for me to just sell the same shit they are, and make the same claims they are. I know who their Chinese suppliers are. I have spoken to them many times, and even argued with the Chinese about how their claims are false. These Chinese suppliers are also pushing the fake erinacine/hericenone numbers themselves, which is why some of these vendors are putting them on their products. There are also Chinese suppliers making PSK and PSP claims, but we have looked at their data and found it to be total dog shit. They are doing a simple polysaccharide test, then assuming those polysaccharides are PSK and PSP simply because they are from turkey tail. Seriously, any real analytical chemist would look at the data behind these people's claims and laugh their asses off. Calling it garbage chemistry would be generous.

This is the biggest issue we are fighting right now. When I first started in nootropics a decade ago, my primary mission was to get people to care about whether or not their products were tested. It might sound silly now, but many people didn't understand the need for lab testing back then. I had to push the nootropics community into caring about it. You can see posts from me on /r/Nootropics that go back a long long time trying to get people to care. The next step was to force companies to care, and see that they needed to take it seriously. This also took years. Now you see companies at least trying to provide COAs and shit like that. That was unheard of when I started in nootropics. Me and a few other people in the nootropics community had to drag the industry kicking and screaming to a place that at least admitted that lab testing was necessary. Now my biggest hurdle is to get people to realize that the science has to be VALID and ACCURATE for you to believe it. I've succeeded in getting people to care about it, but now I need them to care about the scientific accuracy of the results as well. Science can be done improperly to mislead people. Many people don't realize that. They don't understand the limitations of certain methodologies or methods. They don't understand how and HPLC or FTIR works, so they can't accurately assess the results they are being given. This is why we are trying to build out our lab section to get people to care about the specifics of how things are tested.

https://nootropicsdepot.com/in-house-analytical-laboratory/

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I've gone on a couple rants about all the flak I get being a moderator of /r/Nootropics, and the work we are doing in the background.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/fhu02h/is_it_me_or_is_this_subreddit_dying_out/fkey765/

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I go on long rants about method limitations, reference standards, monographs, etc. like I did with KSM-66.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/dmlck9/consumerlabs_ashwagandha_testing_results/

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I talk about what makes color arise in products.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/j6e73p/curowhite_and_the_color_of_curcumin/

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I talk about crystal structure and polymorphs in products.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/it6msd/what_are_you_going_to_do_when_your_adrafinil/g5dfq0g/

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I talked about the work with did with Arjuna on properly analyzing Shoden.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/i1w47y/shoden_ashwagandha/g00bfzp/

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Science has to be valid for consumers to trust the claims. That's all I am asking for. Making up false, misleading, and fake data to make it seem like a product is better than it actually is completely destroys the entire idea behind analytical testing results. It's almost worse than just not testing at all, because you get consumers to start to distrust science itself! If labs can just use shitty science, or completely fabricate results, how can you trust anyone's data? This means these shady competitors putting out false and inaccurate data is directly harming the entire industry. When consumers realize they have been lied to for years, they don't just get angry at that vendor. They get angry at the entire industry. They start to think supplements as a whole are scams. They start to think any lab data is fake. It erodes all the advancements I have made into getting people to care about the analytical testing of the products they are putting into their bodies. This is why I get so heated and upset about it! Then I get attacked for it, and people claim I am just trying to sell people more stuff. To say it is frustrating is putting it mildly. These people are bastardizing science to lie to people and sell overpriced products, then gaslighting everyone into thinking it is ME that is misleading people.

Anyway, sorry for the extra rant. I am really passionate about advancing the analytical standards of the entire industry; mushrooms especially. We are doing a lot of work to advance it, but it is taking a lot longer than I had hoped when I started. I guess proper science is difficult and takes time. However, it is very frustrating for me to sit here and watch all this propaganda mislead people while we are still working on all the validation of the science to show them that. Just know that I am doing everything I can to advance the testing standards of these various mushrooms using valid and accurate science. I am searching for the truth more than anything. I want to make the best product possible, but only if I can be 100% sure that the science is telling me what I think it is. I know it is frustrating for some people to hear me say things are close, but we really are close on some of these mushroom methods. COVID-19 travel restrictions kind of fucked up 2020 plans, but we made do remotely. I built a whole mushroom testing section of our lab, but our main PhD mushroom researcher could not come here from the EU because of travel bans. So I had to fund the build out of a smaller lab in the EU for him to work on, which we tied into our larger synthesis lab project there. I am doing everything in my power to solve these scientific hurdles as quickly as we can, while maintaining the level of scientific rigor that people have come to expect of me. I promise that this year will be a massive year for the analytical science of mushrooms!