Incentives, not promises
A supplier who tests privately holds an option. Flattering results can be published and disappointing ones can be quietly withheld, and nobody outside the company ever learns that the option was exercised. That is not an accusation about any particular supplier; it is a description of what private testing leaves available.
A supplier who publishes before the sale, on a third party's verifiable system, has given that option up. The number is on the testing laboratory's database whether it flatters or not, and it is there before anyone has paid anything. Pre-sale publication is therefore not a transparency gesture. It is a commitment that makes hiding a bad lot structurally difficult, which is a stronger guarantee than any purity claim precisely because it does not require trusting the claimant.


