i think it started with a 'c'

There is a word I am looking for and I know what it means. It means authentic, real, not staged; but it is none of these words. I feel like the word is on the verge of materializing in my head. It is on the tip of my mind's metaphorical tongue. I have encountered the word before, in a setting perhaps not as romanticized as any of us would like, or my writing so far suggests.

While I was doing Fundamentals of Research in my first year of university, it was always mentioned in the Methods section. That's where they explain how the experiment will be conducted, how the data will be collected, yada yada. And that's it, that's where it came from. How unamusing, right. I can't remember the word exactly. Reliable, true, trustworthy? Those are not it.

I am wracking my brain right now trying to remember this word. Brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in a way that can only depict complete concentration. Although I guess I can't really say I'm concentrating too much since I am, of course, typing this as I try to remember. What else was I thinking of when the word popped into my head? Right before it disappeared and left nothing but an impression and a wandering mind? 'Caricatures', I was thinking; somewhere along the lines of a simulated setting, a not-completely-accurate depiction of reality, perhaps an exaggeration.

Ah, I am losing my bearings on the word now. Its edges are becoming fuzzy and I don't even have it on the tip of my mind's metaphorical tongue anymore; more like it's lodged in my mind's metaphorical throat like a fish bone. Synthetic? Surreal? Criticisms against laboratory settings because they are controlled, not spontaneous ... Forgive me, I'm just rattling off my train of thought now.

The significance of this is

I've lost it. I had it once and I lost it. Perhaps it is one of these words already, but it didn't register in my head. Perhaps in my pursuit of this word, I already made up my mind that the ones I could actually think of just. wasn't. it. Perhaps it was that momentary unattainability - now ironically permanent - that attracted me to seek it. The mind's funny like that. Or, I could have just lost it completely.