I am often trying to read the scientific studies linked to articles. But I am really struggling and confused. On top of getting along with all the scientific lingo I am afraid to not being able to differentiate between good ones and bad/poorly conducted ones. I get it that one criterium is the higher the number of participants the better and that it always should be double-blind. But how can I find out if a study was financed by the wrong people or by a company producing exactly the studied supplement? I don´t think just looking at if it was done by university researches is a guarantee since they often also receive external financing. Could you please give some suggestions as to how to distinguish good from bad here? Any list of criteria recommended to check a study against? Thank you so much for your help.

Sadly there is no simple formula or advice I can give that will ultimately help to do what you are asking for. Yes larger sample sizes (N) are better than smaller ones, yes you want DBRPC trials if possible (not always possible), you want to see multiple studies on the same exact product with similar results, by different research teams, you cannot always know the source of funding or researchers biases. There are so many other issues, dosing, part of the plant used, extraction techniques, what is used as a placebo, who it is given to and for how long,……….