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What bakuchiol actually is.
Bakuchiol is a phenolic meroterpene extracted from the seeds of Psoralea corylifolia, a plant with a long history in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine. Its current cosmetic celebrity rests almost entirely on a single 2019 randomised trial by Dhaliwal et al. that compared 0.5% bakuchiol against 0.5% retinol over 12 weeks and found broadly similar wrinkle and pigment endpoints with substantially less irritation. It is a real, replicable result — but a single trial is not the same as a 30-year evidence base. Industry has, predictably, treated the citation as if it were both.