Product Testing Laboratories Editing and Proofreading Services

A laboratory tests a children's toy for a small parts hazard and reports a pass. The product is recalled a year later after a component detaches. The laboratory's report is examined and shows a pass against the correct test method, performed on samples the client supplied. What the report never says is that the samples were hand-assembled prototypes rather than production units, that the test was performed before the moulding tool was finalised, and that the client had asked for the pre-production configuration to be tested. Every fact was known and none of it was written down.

We edit what product testing laboratories produce — test reports and results summaries, test method deviations and justification records, sample receipt and description documentation, scope of accreditation and capability statements, quotations and test plans agreed with clients, uncertainty statements and decision rules for conformity, subcontracted testing disclosures, opinions and interpretations offered alongside results, and non-conforming work and complaint records. Our editors work on the report a recall investigation examines line by line.

The test report is read years later by people asking what it actually covered, and its failure is a valid result on samples the report never adequately describes. We work through these so the item tested is described as it actually was — production unit, pre-production sample, prototype, hand-assembled, with the date of manufacture and any identifying marks — since a pass on a prototype and a pass on a production unit are the same words about very different things; so the sampling is stated as who selected the samples and how, given that client-supplied samples and laboratory-drawn samples support entirely different conclusions about a production run; so any deviation from the standard method is recorded with what was done instead and why, because an undocumented deviation turns a valid result into a disputed one; so the decision rule used to declare a pass is stated, since a result near the limit is a pass under one rule and a fail under another once measurement uncertainty is taken into account; and so any opinion or interpretation is labelled as an opinion and kept apart from the reported results, given that a laboratory's informal comment about likely production performance is read afterwards as a tested finding. Reports written this way say what they actually cover.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client samples, test data and laboratory records. We are editors rather than test engineers, laboratory assessors or product safety specialists, and we offer no view on test results, method selection or conformity decisions. What we can do is make sure the report describes what was actually tested.