How We Source

Field notes, not a medical journal.

Rice Cubes is a home-remedy and general-information site about rice water. We are not dermatologists, we don't diagnose anyone, and nothing here is medical advice. What we are is careful readers and honest writers. We do not do hands-on or laboratory testing of any preparation or product.

What we do before we publish

• Read the actual studies. When a TikTok claims rice water does something, we look for peer-reviewed research and link to it. If the research is thin, we say so.
• Quote the source. Every source we rely on sits in the evidence register with a passage copied from it, the kind of study it was, and what was actually tested. A script re-fetches each source and confirms the quote is still there. If a source can't be fetched, we don't use it.
• Check the material. Most research cited for rice water was done on something else: rice starch, bran extract, a commercial ferment, a single compound. We say which.
• Cite primary sources. PubMed, major medical centers, dermatology associations. We skip blog-to-blog citation chains.
• Name our uncertainty. "The evidence is modest" and "there's no good study on this" are allowed sentences. Confidence is earned from sources, not supplied by tone.

What Rice Cubes is not

This site is written in the tradition of good home-remedy writing: think of a friend who reads the studies and tells you plainly what they say. That means:

• We describe traditional and popular uses of rice water. We don't diagnose or treat disease.
• We'll tell you what might help the look of dark spots, dullness, puffiness, or enlarged-looking pores — not that rice water "cures" or "fixes" anything.
• If you have a persistent skin condition like rosacea, eczema, melasma, cystic acne, or suspected allergic reactions, a licensed clinician is the right next step. We'll even say so on the relevant pages.

What counts as a source here

• First choice: peer-reviewed studies and reviews, quoted from their abstracts on PubMed or the publisher's page.
• For safety and care advice: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the UK Food Standards Agency, the American Academy of Dermatology and the National Rosacea Society.
• Used with a label: professional opinion published by a hospital, and one encyclopedia entry for a brand's history. The register marks these as opinion or tertiary.
• Not used as evidence: brand blogs, retailer pages, AI-generated articles and social media posts. Product pages are cited only for what a brand says about its own product.

We quote abstracts and public pages, not full papers behind paywalls. Where a detail such as sample size is only in the full text, the register says it is not stated in the abstract.

AI disclosure

We use AI tools to help with research synthesis, outline drafting, and editing. Articles are checked against the sources in the evidence register before publication, and the quotes are verified by script. We don't publish unedited AI output.

Corrections

Found something wrong? Email [email protected]. Corrections are logged, with the date and what changed, on the updates page.