Why you shouldn’t fall for ‘clinically proven’ beauty products

From the moment Helena Rubinstein first donned a white lab coat and surrounded herself with beakers a century ago, beauty brands have used the aesthetic and language of science to add layers of supposed authority to their products. Today, beauty aisles are filled with brands touting themselves as “science-backed” and their products as “clinically proven;” terms designed to reassure consumers they are in good hands, but dig a little deeper and you discover that legal regulation on terminology is slim to none. So are we being duped?

Don’t make the mistake of falling for a beauty product being “clinically proven,” says Jessica DeFino, beauty critic and writer of The Review of Beauty. Products being touted as such, unfortunately, hold no official meaning. “It’s not a term that is regulated by the FDA and has no agreed-upon definition,” she tells Dazed. This means the term could be being used in relation to just one specific ingredient in a product. For example, the ingredient could have gone through trials separate from the formulation that the particular brand is using, sometimes even in different quantities.

“To a consumer [“clinically proven”] may imply that a rigorous, scientifically sound clinical trial comparing the product to a placebo or to the current industry gold standard has been carried out but, in reality, the brand manufacturer has no legal constraints to carry out such tests,” says Dr Mary Sommerlad, consultant dermatologist and British Skin Foundation spokesperson. According to Dr Sommerlad, while one would expect, at the very least, that a brand labelling their product as “clinically proven” has trialled the product on volunteers with high quality ‘before and after’ imagery that has been independently verified, this is often not the case.

In the UK, we use the UK Cosmetic Regulations framework, which means any cosmetic product being brought onto the market needs to show it is safe for use on skin, that the ingredients have been assessed, that the product has been manufactured safely and that there is a way for consumers to report adverse events. According to Dr Sommerlad, products can be withdrawn from the market if their manufacturer is unable to comply with regulations, but the regulations do not include the terms “clinically proven,” “clinically tested” or “clinically studied”.

DeFino and Dr Sommerlad both agree that, although pseudo-scientific language has been around for decades, post-COVID consumers have developed a particularly strong interest in evidence and “science-backed” claims. In response, brands try to set themselves apart by implying their product meets these new expectations of efficacy. “Brands will pay influencers, celebrities and healthcare practitioners to promote their claims,” says Dr Sommerlad. “Sometimes the claims are truly impressive, with the clinical studies to support them.” These clinical studies are easy to access for consumers. Other times, there is a lot of opacity and science is used to confuse rather than educate.

“Clinically proven” could reference clinical trials that the brand has run for itself, which are then inherently biased. DeFino explains that when brands use “clinical trial” frameworks for internal testing, they can develop their own metrics for what “proven” means or for what “clinical” means. “Often, the results reference appearance and participant perception in the short-term, rather than function in the long-term,” she says. Brands will use this language of ‘appearance’ and ‘perception’ precisely because they know consumers will conflate immediate surface-level effects with a more studied medical determination.

If trial data is difficult to find you should be able to contact the brand to get further information. If no further information is forthcoming, it may be that the science doesn’t actually back the claims the brand is making.

Charlotte Palermino, esthetician and co-founder of Dieux, says that her brand prefers to use the term ‘clinically tested and vetted’ – even though they have clinical trials on all their products – as they think it’s more clear. “We’ve vetted our products to make these claims but, remember, we are cosmetics,” she tells Dazed. “I think a lot about how someone who may not be savvy with skincare and marketing would perceive terms so, for me, leaving room for people to understand this is not a pharmaceutical is important.”

Palermino says her favourite brands tend to avoid the “clinically proven” terminology. “Extremely vetted brands that have many clinicals like La Roche Posay use other indicators of authority including ‘dermatologist recommended’ or ‘clinically studied,’” she says. Palermino also offers that in order to know if something is clinically proven, consumers can look up the data. “Consumer perception studies are surveys conducted by third-party labs (no measurement or clinical grading), in vitro studies are studies done in test tubes and in vivo studies are done on humans with clinical grading (experts or machinery).”

Unlike pharmaceuticals, Dr Sommerlad says that cosmetic brands are under no obligation to publish data. “I would suggest visiting the brand’s website and accessing the trial data that should be easy to find,” she says. If trial data (e.g. photos, graphs, the methods used) are difficult to find you should be able to contact the brand to get further information. If no further information is forthcoming, it may be that the science doesn’t actually back the claims the brand is making or would not stand up to scrutiny.

It’s not just the language on our beauty product packaging that you need to watch out for. As consumers, we should also be alert to the medicalisation of beauty standards themselves, DeFino says, as it’s often used by brands and even dermatologists as a way to legitimise ideals that are based on aesthetics rather than health and function. Her concern is that this so-called “science” is being used to promote an ageist, inhuman, unattainable standard of beauty that is actually scientifically proven to contribute to increased instances of appearance-related anxiety, depression and dysmorphia.

She points to a page on beauty retailer Sephora’s website for “clinical and dermatological skincare”. Some of the “problems” that Sephora claims to target “clinically” include pores, texture and wrinkles. However, pores, texture and wrinkles are not problems – they are basic human features. “We do not need science to save us from pores, texture, or wrinkles. They are not necessarily signs of unhealthy or non-functioning skin,” DeFino says. “They come with the territory of being alive.”