Tutorial: Verify a quote against its FDA source

Every quote on EphemerisX sites is cited to an FDA document and page. In this tutorial you check one quote from start to finish. It takes about three minutes and works on every site.

Step 1: Choose a quote#

1. Open any decision entry, for example alzheimers.ephemerisx.com/leqembi-traditional-approval/.
2. Under What the sponsor asked the agency to accept, find the quote and its citation:

   Approval package (reviews) · PDF p. 63 · action of Jul 6, 2023 · fda.gov ↗

Step 2: Open the source#

1. Select fda.gov ↗. The document opens from the FDA's website.
2. Check the address bar: the file is served by fda.gov (usually www.accessdata.fda.gov), not by EphemerisX.

Step 3: Go to the cited page#

1. Type 63 in your PDF viewer's page box, or add #page=63 to the end of the address and reload.
2. Use find (Ctrl+F or ⌘+F) with a few distinctive words from the quote.

Step 4: Handle special cases#

• Scanned page (scanned page, OCR-checked or read by OCR): find may not work on an image. Read the page by eye; expect small differences in spacing or punctuation.
• Removed document (No longer on fda.gov · archived copy): the link opens an Internet Archive copy instead.
• Want certainty the file is the same one? Compare its fingerprint. See Verify a document.