This one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. The provenance questions are more useful than the numbers. Does the report name the batch on your vial. Is the date consistent with when that batch existed. Is it addressed to the vendor or to the person who paid for the test. Was the sample taken from general stock or supplied by the vendor. A perfect certificate for a different batch is worth nothing, and vendor-supplied samples are the most common way a genuine report ends up misleading.

RetaRick_CA said:

The provenance questions are more useful than the numbers.

Agreed, and mass spec answers a question purity does not: identity. High purity tells you one thing dominates the chromatogram, not that it is the molecule you ordered. A mass within about a dalton of expected is the identity check.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

raj_cambridge said:

Two reports on the same product from two laboratories, four percentage points apart, and no method stated on either.

This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so. 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.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice.

Community-verified vendors for certificates of analysis: I maintain a spreadsheet of Janoshik-verified test results submitted by community members. Across 61 submitted tests:

• 78% tested at ≥98% purity
• 15% tested at 95-98% purity
• 7% tested at <95% purity (concerning)

The vendors with consistently high purity results are listed in the Vendor Directory. We update monthly based on new community submissions.