Certificates of analysis are the main trust signal in research compounds, which makes them the main thing worth faking. Fabricated and doctored certificates circulate widely. Most are not sophisticated, and almost all of them fail the same single check.
The check that settles it
Every legitimate Janoshik report carries a unique verification key at the foot of the document, and an instruction to verify it at janoshik.com/verify. Enter that key on the laboratory's own website.
What you should get back is the report as the laboratory holds it, on the laboratory's domain. Compare it against what the seller showed you. If a purity figure has been raised, a compound name changed, a batch number swapped or a date moved, the two versions will not match.
This one step catches the overwhelming majority of falsified certificates, because faking it properly would require compromising the laboratory's own systems rather than editing an image. Everything below is for the cases where you cannot run this check, or where you want to know before you bother.
Tells worth knowing
A PDF or screenshot with no live link. The most common presentation of a fake. Both formats are trivially editable and neither carries any proof of origin. A seller who has genuine certificates has no reason to withhold the link to them. Treat "here is a PDF" as an unanswered question rather than an answer.
No batch number, or a batch number that does not match your vial. A certificate describes one specific manufacturing lot. If the batch field is blank, generic, or different from the batch printed on what you received, the document is not about your material — regardless of whether it is authentic.
One certificate covering an entire catalogue. Analysis is per batch and per compound. A single certificate presented as evidence for many different products is either being misrepresented or was never batch-specific to begin with.
Dates that do not cohere. Check that sample received falls after the batch manufacturing date, and that analysis conducted falls after sample received. Fabricated documents are often assembled by editing an older certificate, and the dates are where that shows.
Typography that changes mid-document. Altered figures frequently sit in a slightly different weight, size or alignment from the surrounding text, because they were pasted in. Purity figures and quantities are the fields most often edited, so look hardest there. Zoom in.
A purity figure that is suspiciously round. Real analytical results carry decimals — 99.640%, not 99%. A flat round number in a results table is not how instruments report, and often indicates a figure that was typed rather than measured.
A laboratory that cannot be found. Janoshik is used widely enough to be checkable. If a certificate names a laboratory with no independent web presence, no verification system and no contact route, the laboratory is part of what is being fabricated.
Where the certificate is real but the claim is not
A subtler problem, and more common than outright forgery: the certificate is entirely genuine, but it does not describe what you are being sold.
The document belongs to a different batch. Or a different dosage of the same compound. Or it was commissioned by a manufacturer whose material the seller no longer uses. Nothing on the certificate is false — it simply is not evidence for the specific vial in front of you.
This is why the batch number is the field to check first, and why any seller publishing certificates should tell you which batch each one covers. Ours are listed by compound and batch on our Certificates of Analysis page.
What to ask a supplier
Three questions, and the answers are more informative than the certificates themselves:
- Which batch is this certificate for, and does it match what I will receive?
- Can I have the verification link rather than a PDF?
- When was this batch analysed?
A supplier who tests properly can answer all three immediately. Hesitation on any of them is the finding.
All compounds are supplied strictly for laboratory research and analytical purposes. Not intended for human or veterinary use.