Trust in Quantitative Analysis
The ageless wisdom, “imitation is the sheerest form of flattery,” once again holds true. Unfortunately in quantitative analysis, imitation comes with real consequences.
I am concerned about trends I see in analysis that stretch the definition of quantification. A mentor of mine once pointed out that quantitative analysis is binary. You know the distribution of values around the true value or you do not. You know the certainty with which a measurement represents the true value or you do not. Your analysis is quantitative or it is not.
The above definition places no restrictions on what the precision and accuracy are, it merely states that both accuracy and precision must be measured for an assay to be quantitative.
Quantitative chemical analysis is a vital part of our world. Rules and regulations that protect and preserve our natural resources and environment are based on quantitative analyses. Food we eat and medicine we take are determined to be safe based on quantitative analysis. Tests used by physicians to diagnose and treat disease and illness are based on quantitative analyses. Implicit in this testing and measuring is trust – trust in the value and validity of the measurements.
This trust is important because the majority of people making decisions and experiencing the consequences do not perform the analyses themselves. Instead, they place their trust in analytical labs who, in turn, trust each analyst to act with integrity at all times.
The importance of quantitative analysis has created a growing, undeniable demand for more and better chemical information all at cheaper costs with faster turnaround times. This requires decreased costs and increased number of measurements per unit time. The potential for growth as quantitative chemical measurements make their way from research labs into production labs, from specialty practitioners to technical users, creates a picture ripe with possibilities to improve everything from health to energy and the environment. We can take the next step and start imagining quantitative chemical measurements making their way into consumer and do-it-yourself markets, enabling innovations such as checking the purity of water in your water bottle and monitoring your own blood chemistries.
As with all visions of brighter futures, there are threats that must be addressed.
Today, there are two big threats to quantitative analysis and both impact the quality of data we generate. One encroaching trend that may erode the trust earned from our past successes are imitations. That is to say, assays, methods and procedures that claim to be quantitative, but are not. “Semi-quantitative” is a term that makes little sense. Fit-for-purpose is a strange thing to think of as new: instrumental analysis that is not calibrated using the substance being measured cannot demonstrate accuracy, single points cannot demonstrate reproducibility, predictions and assumptions are not measurements.
It is up to all of us who practice quantitative analysis and who are trusted to provide valid, actionable results to reject these imitations.
The second threat to trust placed in quantitative chemical analysis is apathy among the people who make the measurements. If you design experiments, collect samples, conduct analyses, process data, or report results used in a quantitative sense to make a decision, you are being given an important trust.
Too often, I find people who neither acknowledge nor value this trust. Trust takes a long time and a lot of hard work to earn, but takes very little to lose. It is vital that the trust placed in our quantitative measurements be protected and nurtured. Nowhere is this more important than with the people performing the analysis. Nothing but the strictest integrity can preserve the trust earned by the prior success of quantitative analysis. The attention to detail, the effort put into excellence, and the recognition by all involved of the importance of each and every quantitative measurement is required to bring the bright future we can imagine into reality.
As a child growing up in a farming community in north central Pennsylvania, chemicals were things used to strip paint, clean grease and kill weeds. Richard’s laboratory career started in high school when he and a friend were offered a few dollars to clean out and paint the basement of a small family run environmental laboratory. “Flame atomic absorption had to be the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Who doesn’t like flames that change color when you spray solution into them? And you could make good money doing it!” he says. Two chemistry degrees, a successful pharmaceutical bioanalytical career, and 34 years later he is the co-founder of an analytical laboratory focused on quantitative analysis by LC-MS in support of pharmaceutical, biological, and medical research. The mechanisms of ion formation at atmospheric pressure and the consequences for quantitative analysis by mass spectrometry are his primary research interests. Over the next 30 years, he hopes to be a big part of improving the access to quantitative chemical information particularly quantitative analysis by mass spectrometry.
