Don’t let the sunscreen recall headlines coming from Australia fool you. This is not about the 21 Australian sunscreens recalled by regulators, or the Australian manufacturer that produced the base formulation in the sunscreens—this is about Princeton Consumer Research (PCR), a US-based testing lab, currently under investigation by Australian regulators for potentially providing unreliable SPF tests, resulting in the mislabeling of 21 sunscreens from 17 different brands.
The finger-pointing began in June when Australian consumer group CHOICE found 16 of 20 sunscreens failed SPF claims, with Ultra Violette’s Lean Screen SPF 50+ registering a glaring SPF of 4. Initially, Ultra Violette and other Australian sunscreen brands named in the report challenged CHOICE’s findings, with Ultra Violette citing its PCR report as proof of its SPF 50+. But after testing the product with multiple labs, Ultra Violette's results were so inconsistent, ranging from SPF 4 to 64, that the company voluntarily recalled all Lean Screen batches.
In August, the brand addressed the issue on its website, emphasizing that Lean Screen was made by a third-party manufacturer and pointed a bold finger at said manufacturer, making it clear the brand would not work with them again. (Editor's note: After publication, a representative for Ultra Violette said the brand is no longer working with PCR.)
On September 30, following an ongoing investigation by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australia’s regulatory body for therapeutic and medical goods, the agency posted an update stating that it had flagged 21 sunscreens that share a base formulation manufactured by Wild Child Laboratories.
But the TGA did not point its finger at the manufacturer. During the course of its investigation, the regulator had not identified any issues with Wild Child Laboratories, according to the TGA’s statement. Instead, the TGA stated it had concerns about the reliability of testing labs, in particular, “significant concerns about the reliability of SPF testing undertaken by Princeton Consumer Research Corp (PCR Corp).”
A scientist, who is a former PCR employee, spoke to BeautyMatter on the condition of anonymity to protect his career. He said he left the consumer testing lab industry altogether because of the questionable ethics he saw at PCR and other labs. “I don't like how business mixes with ‘science,’ especially with consumer claims testing. It's unethical and goes against the principles we are taught in school as scientists.” The scientist felt his ethics and integrity were at stake at PCR for being “forced to do things against our own will for their business.”
From his experience at PCR, the scientist said he observed the lab reusing volunteers to make the volunteer data appear more robust. He also claimed to have seen “rounding up of numbers and pushing back erythemal scoring dates outside the window.”
It’s Complicated
SPF testing, by nature, is complicated. “I see a misconception that SPF is some sort of absolute number. It doesn’t work that way,” Dr. Harry Sarkas, Chief Scientific Officer, Solésence, told BeautyMatter. There is a significant amount of variability that comes with testing on human subjects, Dr. Sarkas said, to the extent that the SPF testing protocols (ISO 2444, used everywhere except the US; FDA in the US) acknowledge these variations.
SPF is reported as a mean value to account for these variations, which is why you don’t often see an SPF testing report where all the numbers match and all the human subjects complete the study. Humans are unpredictable. Except, apparently, the human test subjects used by PCR.
BeautyMatter has obtained PCR test reports for US sunscreens Supergoop! Mineral Unseen Sunscreen SPF 40, Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen SPF 50, and reviewed KraveBeauty’s Beet The Sun SPF 40, which all share unrealistic results similar to Ultra Violette’s report.
This is not about the brand, it’s not about the base formulation—it’s about the lab.
BeautyMatter showed the PCR reports to a photobiologist, who found the results “highly unusual” that 10 people would have identical results. “People react differently to the sun in slightly varied ways. Even identical twins do not express UV exposure the same way in skin reaction and pigmentation. If they freckle, no identical twins show the same freckling pattern and prediction."
As of press time, KraveBeauty and Supergoop! declined to comment for this story.
"Leave the Science to the Scientists"
UK reality TV stars Tony Barlow and his former husband, Barrie Drewitt, founded PCR in 2012, with the company’s “global headquarters” located in St. Petersburg, Florida, and additional locations in Ohio, Canada, and two in the UK. While all of PCR’s SPF testing is conducted in its UK locations, Drewitt works from the St. Petersburg office as the company’s Technical Director and Principal Investigator.
This is not the first time Barlow and Drewitt have been accused of manipulating lab data. The former couple was investigated for falsifying clinical trial data in 2006 and 2007 with the now-defunct UK-based company Euroderm Research, but later cleared of all charges.
Many of the lab’s former employees have voiced their concerns on GlassDoor and Reddit regarding Drewitt’s lack of qualifications.
Drewitt declined to comment for this story.
Brian Ecclefield, who worked at PCR for nine months, knows red flags when he sees them.
Before joining PCR, he worked in sales at AMA Laboratories, a consumer products testing company notorious for fabricating sunscreen and other test results between 1987 and 2017, and defrauding cosmetic and personal care companies of more than $46 million. In 2022, the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York sentenced AMA Laboratories’ owner, Gabriel Letizia Jr., to 60 months in prison, and he was ordered to forfeit $46.2 million after pleading guilty to defrauding customers and causing misbranded drugs to be introduced into interstate commerce.
Ecclefield might have worked in sales, but like any good salesman, he had to know what he was selling. The more he learned about cosmetic testing, the more he started to question how the lab conducted its sunscreen studies.
Ecclefield joined PCR in 2017 after resigning from his position at AMA Laboratories over ethical concerns earlier that year, but it wasn’t long before the red flags began to reappear. When he tried to voice his concerns with upper management, he was told to “leave the science to the scientists.” Ecclefield recognized the signs of lab misconduct. At that point, he knew what he saw was too good to be true, and he was seeing it again.
BeautyMatter has obtained a screenshot of an internal e-signature audit trail from January 2021, showing that PCR co-founder Barrie Drewitt, as the Principal Investigator, took 12 seconds to review a final SPF test report and then sign it.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Even when a third-party lab conducts the testing, brands are ultimately responsible for choosing competent, accredited labs and ensuring protocols align with the relevant standard. That said, experts repeatedly noted that SPF studies are complex and nuanced. Without specialized expertise, spotting red flags in SPF testing reports can be exceedingly difficult. Cosmetic chemists, who many brands employ or utilize to help develop product formulations, aren’t typically trained for this kind of evaluation. According to Ecclefield, small brands wouldn’t know what to look for.
Many brands develop products based on a contract manufacturer’s base formula before sending the product to a lab for testing to ensure it meets regulatory standards. Multinational companies can afford to have someone on their payroll to examine sunscreen studies and identify potential red flags in the methodology, but smaller brands don’t know what they don’t know. Brands trust their contract manufacturer, who trusts the lab. When the results come back favorable, brands are less likely to push back, but that’s exactly what Ecclefield recommends brands do.
“If results show studies that are 100% effective, 100% of the time, you should question them, and the brand and consumer should question them, because nothing is 100% effective,” he said.
Ecclefield encouraged brands to visit their labs in person and ask questions about their process. “If you're not seeing it with your own eyes, you can't trust it,” he advised.
The former PCR scientist said that when brands and manufacturers are searching for a lab, it should be obvious that they ask for credentials. “If you are giving money to any entity for a service, you do not just look at their certifications, advertising, and organizational associations. Look up the degrees of the people [running the lab], do a background check. Have they done any peer-reviewed research? What were their institutions?”
Ecclefield said he felt compelled to speak up about the lab’s practices and the potential consequences to brands and consumers. “Anytime you have somebody who's messing with direct consumer safety, it's bad,” he said. “We're not talking about just making a couple of bucks on the side… the consequences are things like sunburns and cancer.”
Just because Australian regulators are initiating recalls on sunscreens doesn’t necessarily mean that American sunscreen brands are in the clear. According to Ecclefield, PCR holds a significant share of the American market: “Princeton has tested many US products over the last decade… This initial round of Australian retests is just the start.”
For beauty brands, the news coming out of Australia serves as a warning of what can happen when SPF reports aren’t rigorously vetted and verified. Brands must treat sunscreen testing with the utmost seriousness. Between the regulatory risk, legal exposure, and long-term damage to consumer trust, the stakes are too high to put your head in the sand and hope that everyone else is doing the right thing. Experts argue that there should be several rounds of checks and balances to ensure that the products that end up on shelves match the claims on the label.
To help brands navigate this complex landscape, BeautyMatter will publish additional resources for vetting labs and validating results in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more.
