Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. The four things to check on any report, in order: does it name your batch, who commissioned it, what method was used, and does it report content as well as purity. A report failing any of those is weak evidence regardless of the percentage on it.
A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:
How people are distinguishing a supplier having a bad batch from a supplier on the way out?
Dr.PathRoch said:The four things to check on any report, in order: does it name your batch, who commissioned it, what method was used, and does it report content as…
Coming at Dr.PathRoch’s question from a different direction. Inter-laboratory variation comes from real methodological differences, not sloppiness: which reference standard was used and how it was itself calibrated, the gradient and column, the detection wavelength, and where the integration baseline was drawn. A percentage point or two between competent labs is expected. What is not expected is a large gap, and the usual explanation there is that one report is not of the batch in your hand.
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Shop Reference StandardsOP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.
Went back through my own correspondence with an earlier supplier and the warning signs were all there in the replies, weeks before the quality changed. I was reading the product and not the behaviour.
BariatricNurseD said:Inter-laboratory variation comes from real methodological differences, not sloppiness: which reference standard was used and how it was itself…
Agreed, with a caveat about community reputation: it is a lagging indicator. Reports arrive weeks after orders, so a supplier can look excellent for a month after quality has already changed.