How Do I Verify a Janoshik Report?

You take two identifiers printed on the report, the task number and the unique key, and enter them on Janoshik's verification page, reached by typing the laboratory's address yourself rather than following a link someone sent you. Then you compare what the laboratory's record shows against the document you were given, field by field. If they agree, the report is genuine and has not been edited since the laboratory issued it.

That is a real result and a narrow one. A successful lookup proves that a document exists in the laboratory's records exactly as you were shown it. It does not prove that the vial in front of you is the sample that document describes, and most of the ways people get misled by these reports happen in that gap. Whether certificates in general prove anything is a separate question with its own answer; this page is about one laboratory's public lookup and how to read its result.

What do you need from the report before you start?

Two identifiers: the task number and the unique key. The verification form itself says where they are, noting that the task number sits at the top left of each report and the unique key at the bottom. The task number identifies the job in the laboratory's system. The key is the part that stops someone confirming a report simply by guessing task numbers in sequence.

There is one exception. Clients can choose to make a test public, and the form notes that no key is needed for public tests. For everything else, a report with its key cut off, blurred or missing cannot be checked by a third party at all. That is not proof of anything sinister, since sellers sometimes crop documents carelessly, but it does mean the report is currently unverifiable, and it is reasonable to ask for the full page.

How does the lookup actually work?

You enter the two identifiers into a form and the laboratory's system returns its own record of that task for you to compare. The page describes its purpose plainly, as a way to verify the authenticity of any test the company has conducted. The sequence that avoids the obvious traps is short.

1. Open a fresh browser tab and type the laboratory's address yourself, then navigate to its verification page from there.
2. Enter the task number exactly as printed, including any leading digits.
3. Enter the unique key exactly as printed, character for character.
4. Submit the form and wait for the laboratory's record to appear.
5. Compare that record with the document you were given, field by field, before drawing any conclusion.

The first step matters more than it looks. The value of the lookup comes entirely from the fact that the laboratory, not the seller, controls the page answering your question. A link embedded in a PDF, pasted into a chat or encoded in a QR code can point anywhere, including to a page built to look like the real one. Consumer-protection guidance on spoofed sites gives the same advice for exactly this reason: when the destination matters, reach it by an address you know rather than one you were handed, and check for misspellings or a switched letter 2.

What should you compare once the record comes up?

Everything, and the results especially. A lookup that returns a record proves that the task exists; it only proves your document is unaltered if the two agree on every line. Editing a figure in a PDF is trivial, and a forger who starts from a genuine report keeps the genuine identifiers precisely so that the lookup succeeds.

The client name deserves particular attention. A seller presenting a report commissioned by someone else is not necessarily doing anything wrong, since a manufacturer may commission testing that a distributor passes on. But it changes what the report can tell you, because the party who chose which sample to send is then not the party you are dealing with.

What does a successful match prove?

That the laboratory issued this report, for this task, with these results, and that nobody has changed it since. That is worth having. Before lookups like this existed, a buyer holding a PDF had no practical way to distinguish an original from a copy with one number retyped, and an altered document is precisely the kind of evidence that looks most convincing.

It also means the results were produced by a laboratory rather than typed by a seller, which is the property that separates third-party testing from a marketing claim. Whether those results are any good is a separate matter that the lookup does not touch. The competence of the methods behind a number depends on how they were validated 5, and a laboratory's accreditation status, whatever it is, is a separate fact to be checked separately. A successful lookup is silent on both.

What does a match not prove?

That the material in your hand is the material that was tested. A testing laboratory analyses the sample it receives, under the description the client supplies, and reports on that sample. The international standard for testing laboratories builds this into what a report must say: results relate only to the items tested, and information supplied by the customer has to be identified as such 1. The sample description on a report is, in general, whatever the client called the sample when sending it.

Several things therefore sit entirely outside the lookup. Who chose the sample, and whether it was typical of the batch or the best vial in it. Whether the sample was the same material now being sold under that report. Whether the batch has been stored properly in the months since. And whether one vial represents the rest: even carefully controlled material shows measurable variation from vial to vial, and collaborative studies find differences between laboratories measuring the same lot 4.

What is the batch-mismatch trap?

It is a genuine, unaltered report attached to material from a different batch. Every check described above passes, the lookup returns a perfect match, and the document still says nothing about what you have. Because it involves no forgery at all, it is also the version least likely to be noticed.

Batch matters because the properties people care about are properties of a production run. The mixture of related impurities in a synthetic peptide depends on the conditions of that particular synthesis and purification, and differs between runs of the same sequence 3. A report on last spring's batch can be entirely accurate and describe material that no longer exists.

• Look for a batch or lot identifier on the vial, and check whether the sample description on the report refers to it.
• Compare the testing date with anything you know about when the batch was made. A report dated before the batch existed cannot describe it.
• Notice when a single report is shown against several products or across a long period. One task describes one sample.
• Ask the seller directly which batch was tested. A clear answer costs them nothing if the link is real.

What if the lookup fails?

Then the document cannot currently be confirmed, which is not the same as proven fake. Start with the mundane explanations. Retype both identifiers, since a misread character is the usual cause. Check that you are on the laboratory's own page and not a lookalike. Check that you have the key from the bottom of the report rather than another reference number.

If it still fails, the reasonable conclusion is that you have a document you cannot verify, and it should carry the weight of one. Asking the party who supplied it for a complete, uncropped copy is a fair next step. A report that cannot be looked up is not evidence of a problem. It is simply not evidence of anything.

Is the public list of tests an endorsement?

No, and the laboratory says so. Its public test listing carries a statement that it does not endorse, sponsor or have any affiliation with the companies, organisations or products listed. The entries are tests that clients chose to make public, and the sample names and company descriptions on them read as written by those clients.

Two consequences follow. Appearing on the list tells you that a test was run and published, not that a seller is reliable. And the list is selected by construction: a client who receives a poor result is under no obligation to publish it. A public archive of results is a useful thing to be able to search, but it is a record of what people wanted seen.

Put together, the lookup is best understood as the first link in a chain rather than the conclusion. It turns a PDF from an unverifiable claim into a confirmed laboratory document. What that document is about, and whether it is about your material, are the next two questions, and the batch identifier on the vial is where both of them start.