Posting this because the summary going around does not say what the paper says, and the difference matters for how people here are using it.
The pattern that distinguishes a bad batch from an exit is behaviour rather than product. A bad batch comes with communication, a reshipment offer and a batch number. An exit comes with slower replies, pressure toward less reversible payment methods, sudden discounting, and the same reassurance repeated without any new information. The product tells you less than the correspondence does.
Where I think it is weakest: the comparator does most of the work in how this gets reported, and it is not the comparator most people think they are citing.
What I am trying to establish is what a vetting checklist should actually contain, as opposed to a list of things that are easy to fake. Numbers rather than impressions, if you have them.
Figures above are from the primary publication rather than the press summary. If a number here disagrees with one you have, post yours and we will work out which of us is reading a secondary source.
fiona_glasgow said:The pattern that distinguishes a bad batch from an exit is behaviour rather than product.
fiona_glasgow has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. The useful checklist is about verifiability rather than presentation. Independent test results commissioned by buyers rather than by the seller, consistency across multiple batches over time rather than one flattering report, a physical address and a company registration that resolve, batch and lot numbers on the actual labelling, and a shipping practice that matches what the material needs. Everything a good-looking website provides is cheap to fake; none of the items above are.
fiona_glasgow said:The pattern that distinguishes a bad batch from an exit is behaviour rather than product.
I disagree that testing history is decisive. It tells you what a supplier did when they were being watched. Continuity of behaviour under stress — a late shipment, a failed test, a complaint — is more predictive than any run of good results.
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View ResultsThis one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. Prices dramatically below market are the strongest single signal, and the reason is arithmetic rather than suspicion. Synthesis, testing, and cold-chain shipping have floors. A price well under the floor means something was skipped, and the two things that get skipped are testing and content.
julia.endo said:The useful checklist is about verifiability rather than presentation.
This is my experience too, for whatever a second data point is worth. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.