Unified rating system for personal care ingredients: is it possible or is it a marketing bluff?

Attempts to create a single, unified rating system for personal care ingredients are a product of the influence of marketing incentives. This article examines the structural flaws of such systems, highlighting how they try to unify an uncertain nomenclature of cosmetic ingredients, prioritizing consumer-friendly simplicity over a mechanism- and function-based evaluation. Ignoring the critical difference in composition, biological effects, and interactions in formulation, the analysis demonstrates that "unified" scores obscure more than they reveal. Any attempt to reduce this complexity to a single adjective or number is not science: it is a marketing bluff.