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A decade or two ago, the primary users of mass spectrometers were likely graduates of doctoral programs specializing in mass
spectrometry (MS). But as the science evolved and merged with the analytical mainstream, manufactures redoubled their efforts
to make their instruments and operating software user-friendly. These days, specialists in various disciplines use MS as an
analytical tool, a development that demands that instrument and software engineers pay close attention to ease-of-use issues
and better understand how and for what purposes their instruments are used. As an example of how the needs reflect the changing
field, I used some examples when teaching liquid chromatography (LC)–MS courses more than a decade ago from work that illustrated
how simply changing temperature to affect viscosity, increasing flow rate, and using shorter columns made dramatic changes
in the speed of an LC separation. This knowledge was hardly novel back then to a chromatographer let alone in today's world
of advanced technology such as ultrahigh-pressure LC (UHPLC). Such tricks still come in handy, of course only when the separation
permits, but the audience for much of the LC–MS discussion years ago consisted of mass spectrometrists who had little understanding
of chromatographic fundamentals. Today's practitioners employing MS start at a much higher level of comprehension.
So, consider the number of people in analytical practices and the wealth of experience each could contribute to almost any
technical discussion. Bringing those experiences to a wider audience has been the goal of this column and also the guiding
charter for the Conference on Small Molecule Science (CoSMoS), which I help organize. CoSMoS starts each conference with a
series of free tutorials to bring attendees to the same conversational level before engaging the topics later in the oral
presentations, which are then broadly discussed in workshops. Discussions at conferences, "for-a-fee" LC–MS courses, and postings
of moderated Web sites and blogs are other primary means to examine not only suiting a mass spectrometer to a given purpose
but the art of employing the devices.
Michael P. Balogh
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Jeremy Bentham in 1789 described in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation a set of assumptions — "the greatest good for the greatest number" — upon which the philosophic concept of utility is based.
Of course, whatever the greatest good is for the greatest number, it brings little benefit to those not included in that number.
As we established in an earlier column (1), not everyone finds that he or she falls within the "greatest good" construct.
So what are practitioners to do to stay abreast of technology developments in MS? As I wrote in the earlier column, simply
subscribing to moderated discussion groups is a benefit easily realized. But as though gaining ground on what we need to know
about MS is not difficult enough, an unapproved article showed up threatening an attack on a newsgroup. The same message was
posted to many other newsgroups. The newsgroup sci.chem, for example, had about 1400 messages in a short span and all but
about 10 of them were bogus. As David Bostwick (Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry Facility, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia), the moderator
and driving force providing one of the better services to our interests points out: "The newsgroup approval process is not
very secure, so messages can show up in the group without going through the moderators for approval. We do what we can, but
a determined, serious hacker can cause a lot of problems. What happened here, and in many other groups, is the message approval
was forged, and the article was injected directly, bypassing the moderators."
There are any number of courses provided today which, if one has the time and financial support, are an excellent source of
knowledge. Well versed practitioners as well as novices might attend courses such as those given the weekend before the annual
ASMS conference ( http://www.asms.org/). But the content of those courses can sometimes prove daunting for scientists who are not already well versed in MS. Courses
like those offered by ACS and conferences such as EAS ( http://www.eas.org/) and FACSS ( http://www.facss.org/) are better attuned to neophytes.
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