Social and Economic Impact of a Wrong Analysis

The social and economic impact of the analyst getting a wrong result and the customer consequently reaching a false conclusion can be enormous, for example  

Just think of the huge costs, both in terms of financial and other resources, and in terms of the distress to individuals and their families, that could be caused by such mistakes. In all areas of application getting it wrong leads to loss of confidence in the validity of future analytical results. Confidence is an important commodity. At one extreme, loss of confidence puts the future existence of the particular analytical laboratory at risk, but more generally it leads to costly repetition of analyses and, in the area of trade, inhibits the expansion of the world economy. 

Many of you will be able to call to mind reports in the papers, or on TV, where the analytical chemist has apparently made a mistake. Some of these may be notorious but remember the many million times that the analytical chemist gets it right without any publicity. We are all aware of the debate over global warming just think of how important it is that action taken in the future is based on information that gives a true picture of the composition of the global 

The issue is that the level of quality control that analysts have applied to their measurements in the past has been insufficient to meet the new challenges of today s analytical problems. There are many reasons why a laboratory might 

Whatever the reason for obtaining it, a chemical measurement has a certain importance since decisions based upon it will very often need to be made. These decisions may well have implications for the health or livelihood of millions of people. In addition, with the increasing liberalization of world trade, there is pressure to eliminate the replication of effort in testing products moving across national frontiers. This means that quantitative analytical results should be acceptable to all potential users, whether they be inside or outside the organization or country generating them. 

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