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Every claim that needs a source has one you can open.

Portrait of Noah Cortez

Noah Cortez

Stanford Journalism Program

Journalism student at Stanford University, where he studies international relations and Asian-American studies alongside the Stanford Journalism Program. He checks the sourcing on Gritwright guides: that every number is traceable to the study it came from, that the study says what the guide claims it says, and that nothing has been quietly rounded in our favour.

Fact-checked by Noah Cortez

Noah does not write the guides. He is the reason you can check them. Every guide here goes through the same pass before it publishes: each source is opened and read, not quoted from a search result snippet, and each number is followed back to the paper that produced it. Where a source turns out to be unreachable, the claim resting on it comes out of the guide rather than staying in with a hopeful link attached.

What he is hunting is narrow and specific, and it is the failure mode that gets past everyone: a figure copied from another article rather than from the study, a finding stretched a little past what the researchers actually reported, a citation that quietly supports a weaker version of the sentence sitting above it. That pass covers the whole archive, from the training research to the relationship guides. It is also worth saying what it is not. Checking the sourcing is not the same as assessing the medicine: where a guide makes a clinical or physiological claim, the label on that guide says which kind of check it actually received.

Get Strong

How to Build Muscle: A Beginner's Guide

Everything that decides whether you build muscle, in the order it matters: training, food, recovery and time, with the research behind each number.

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How Much Protein to Build Muscle?

The number the research supports, why it is lower than the industry says, when it goes up, and whether the 30 grams per meal rule is real.

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How to Build Muscle for Skinny Guys

Why hardgainers stay skinny, what the overfeeding research says about fast metabolisms, and how to eat and train when weight will not move.

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The Ten-Minute Warm-Up for Lifting

What to actually do in the ten minutes before you lift, and why the stretching you were taught at school makes your first working set worse.

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How Long Does It Take to Build Muscle?

What actually changes in week 3, week 12 and month 6, why you get stronger long before you look bigger, and how much muscle a beginner can really gain.

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Get Style

What Colours Actually Go Together

The rule that covers most outfits, what colour research says about which pairs people find harmonious, and why the same pair works on you and not in a photo.

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How to Make Clothes Last Twice as Long

What washing, drying and storage actually do to a garment, which habits are worth changing, and the two that are worth more than everything else combined.

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Get Skilled

The Home Repairs Worth Learning

The ten things most likely to break, which you can fix in an afternoon, and the three jobs where calling someone is the cheaper answer.

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Get Social

Dating Apps Are for Access, Not for Dating

The apps are measurably good at one thing and measurably bad at several others. Here is what the survey data and the psychology research actually establish.

Research-backedPractitioner-tested

What Actually Decides How a First Date Goes

Most first date advice has no source behind it. Here is what the research on speed dates, question-asking and nerves actually says decides how one goes.

Research-backedPractitioner-tested

How to Say No, and Why It Is So Hard

Refusing is harder than anyone asking you realises, and there is research showing exactly how much. What that means for how to say no, and what silence costs.

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How to Argue Without Wrecking Things

Researchers who coded 124 newlywed couples found the outcome was visible in how a disagreement started. Here is what that means for your next one.

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Why You Keep Having the Same Argument

Most couple conflicts are never resolved, and the research says that is normal. What separates couples who last is not solving them but how they talk about them.

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What Actually Predicts a Happy Relationship

The largest study ever run on this question compared hundreds of variables across 11,196 couples. What predicted happiness was not what the advice columns say.

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How to Know When to End a Relationship

The question is usually asked wrong. What the research says about ambivalence, about why you are a biased judge of it, and what really predicts an ending.

Research-backedPractitioner-tested

Why You Go Silent in an Argument

Going quiet mid-argument is usually not a tactic. Here is what the physiological research found, why it reads as the opposite of what it is, and what to do instead.

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How to Make Friends as an Adult

Why it gets harder after school, the number of hours the research says it actually takes, and what to do on a Tuesday when you know nobody.

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Get Rich

The First Five Money Moves, In Order

What to do with the first money you earn, in the order that actually protects you, and why the order matters more than the amounts.

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Get Sharp

How to Actually Focus

What interruption really costs, why the famous 23-minute figure is not what the study found, and the four changes that do most of the work.

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