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Alec Batis, a 57-year-old Japanese-Puerto Rican cosmetic chemist, has spent more than three decades working for and with beauty giants such as Nars, L’Oreal, Pfizer, Kiehl’s and Shiseido. He says that formulas get “quietly hollowed out”, with active ingredients reduced down to a tiny amount “that does no meaningful work”.

“The big prestige brand products are very good at hydration and barrier support, but the antioxidant complex, the botanical extract, the peptide? They become ingredients which are there only to be talked about,” he adds.

Long an advocate for transparency in the cosmetics industry, Batis co-founded his own brand, Sweet Chemistry, with New York biotech company Xylyx Bio in 2024. He was interviewed as an insider industry chemist in the 2019 Canadian-American documentary film Toxic Beauty about potential exposure to dangerous substances from commonly trusted beauty products such as baby powder.

After three decades working as a chemist and as a skincare marketer, Batis felt he had a mission to unveil disinformation in skincare. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the gap between what’s implied and what’s real.”

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