Data policy

What the index holds

Analytical results, the method that produced them, the lot they describe, and a pseudonymous handle for whoever submitted them. That is the complete list.

What it does not hold

• No real names. Contributors are pseudonymous. The index could not identify one if compelled to.
• No email addresses, no payment details, no addresses. Submission is by a handle and a document.
• No visitor analytics. No analytics script, no pixel, no fingerprinting, no third-party requests except the web font. No cookies of any kind. One localStorage key, ax.theme, holding the string "light" or "dark".
• No purchase records. The index knows a lot was bought. It does not know from where, by whom, for how much, or when the order was placed.

Publication

Everything the index holds is published. There is no private tier, no members' area and no dataset held back. If the index knows it, it is in the CSV.

Corrections

A published figure is corrected when it is shown to be wrong. Corrections are logged publicly with the date, the record, the field, the old value, the new value and the reason. Nothing is silently amended and no correction is made without a log entry — the log is the complete history.

Withdrawal

A record is withdrawn only where the submitter demonstrates that the material assayed was not the material described — a mislabelled lot, a transcription error large enough to make the record meaningless, or a laboratory retracting its own report. A withdrawn record leaves a tombstone: the ID stays live, states that it was withdrawn, and gives the reason. Records are never deleted, because a deleted record is indistinguishable from a record that was never submitted.

Disputes

Suppliers do occasionally dispute a result. The index's position is fixed and is applied identically to everyone:

• A result is not removed because it is unwelcome. A laboratory reported a number and the index publishes what the laboratory reported.
• A supplier may submit its own counter-evidence, which is published as a record on the same terms as any other — with its provenance marked supplier-supplied, because that is what it is.
• Where a re-test disagrees with the original, both stand. The batch page shows the disagreement, and the disagreement is the finding. The index does not adjudicate between two laboratories.
• Where a factual error is demonstrated — wrong lot number, wrong compound, transcription error — it is corrected within a day and logged.

Legal requests

The index publishes measurements and factual identifiers. It holds no personal data about contributors that could be produced in response to a demand, which is a deliberate design property rather than an accident. Requests to remove factual analytical results are declined. See the notice-and-takedown page for copyright claims specifically.