As these results clearly demonstrate, the word “quantiate” is much more highly correlated with biology than with physics, and vice versa for “quantify.” Since, as everybody knows, physicists are smarter than biologists[2], this means that using the word “quantitate” is stupid.
[2] V. Adrian Parsegian. Harness the hubris: Useful things physicists could do in biology. Physics Today, pages 23–27, 1997. See counterpoint column by R.H. Austin p 27, e.g., “Having lived with biologists and biochemists for a number of years, I know damn well that many of them can’t reason their way out of a paper bag, and that they really need the analytical and experimental gifts of good physicists...”.
UPDATE: Forgot to add the link to the paper! Fixed.
28 comments:
"Quantitate"? What the heck is this word.
Google results are interesting. Following the usual crop of "YourFreeOnlineDictionarySupportedOnlyBySellingYourEyeballs" links, all the other hits appear to be biology related.
Upon reading this, I had a strange experience. I began twitching, gagging, and having Tourette's-like exclamations of "somebody actually looked this up!?"
I have quantified it as a Nerd Attack.
Don't worry, I watched some MTV and am feeling better now.
You have correctly identified it as a Nerd Attack. I may go further, and quantify it as a Nerd Attack level 3.7, +- 0.4.
A biologist would evidently quantitate it, possibly as an elevated sodium level of 110 mEq/L.
I mean, of course, a depressed sodium level. Typical biologist mistake.
(note: I have no dog in this fight).
Nick, I think "quantitate" is a bastard child back-formation from "quantitative". Traditionally, biologists were not quantitative beasts. When they did an experiment that _was_ quantitative, they naturally needed to point it out. So, they quantitated. Things are obviously shifting in the world of biology, but the word remains.
Might I quantificate for a moment, I mean pontificate. This actually seems like a case where quantitate and quantitation makes more sense than quantify and quantification although I often wondered how many angels would fit on the head of a pin. Maybe the physicists can answer this since they are smarter.
To "accept" the idea that "physicists are smarter than biologists", you need to be a physicist. Seriously, these guys deal with atoms, sub-atomic particles and the laws that govern them. Do you think "that" is difficult? Then you have no idea how almost infinite and complex phenomena govern living organisms. You can predict the behaviour of a particle on paper. But you cannot predict the behaviour of a cell exposed to an agent. You have to DO the experiment and yet, you cannot be sure that next time you repeat the experiment, the result will be exactly the same as before. Biologists aren't dumb.
Interesting dodging of the etymologies: no one is interested in which arbitrary decision makes more sense when examined objectively, apparently.
Thanks for the article, though. My biochemical dissertation will thus contain "quantitate", because I've nothing to prove.
From the journal "Science Editor":
There is no difference between quantitate and quantify. Either form will do.
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/members/securedDocuments/v28n1p027.pdf
I prefer "quantitation" over "quantification" just because it's shorter. I reject that "measure" is a synonym for "quantitate" or "quantify". In journals I read (I'm a bioanalytical chemist) "measure" usually implies performing a measurement with an instrumental technique, whereas "quantitate/quantify" means actually reporting a real value (i.e. quantity/volume of the analyte of interest).
Regarding physicists being smarter than biologists: it is widely accepted that as far as general and specific intelligence is concerned, physicists > chemists > biologists. I would like to point out, however, that the great work of physics is being done by a relatively small number of very bright people, and the rest of the physics majors I know are self-righteously unemployed or work in tech support for T-mobile. Let's face it, physics is useless unless it's applied. Applied physics is called "engineering" or "chemistry".
One more bit of data to consider:
A search of PubMed returns:
-10,588 papers with "quantitation" in the title.
-32,834 with "quantitation" in the abstract.
-17,176 papers with "quantification" in the title.
-57,910 papers with "quantification" in the abstract.
Quantification is winning.
The use of Pubmed can lead to confusion. Consider this:
150 papers contain BOTH "quantitate" AND "quantify".
1476 papers contain BOTH "quantitation" AND "quantification".
313 papers contain BOTH "quantitate" AND "quantification".
1023 papers contain BOTH "quantify" AND "quantitation".
Another consideration would be the language and country of origin of the authors of these papers, and whether there is any association with the preferential use of these terms.
For example, the Spanish terms are "cuantificar" and "cuantificación", there being no such thing as "cuantitar" or "cuantitación". Therefore, my guess is that Spanish-speaking authors might have a preference in favor of "quantify" and "quantification", be it correct or not.
Perhaps "quantitate" and "quantitation" are more English, simply because they may be less Spanish than "quantify" and "quantification".
I found a small typo on page 2 of your paper, sorry to mention it.
Quantiate?? You have invented a new word, so of course, physicists ARE smarter.
I know some dumb-ass physicists, and some extremely intelligent biologists so you clearly don't know what you're talking about. At least us biologists actually do meaningful research curing diseases as opposed to twiddling thumbs watching atoms collide. I'm not saying physics is any easier than biology because it's all relative, but I AM saying that the field is less important.
@Anonymous: A) It's called humor. Don't take it so seriously. B) The fact that you know some intelligent biologists or "dumb-ass" physicists doesn't clearly demonstrate anything, let alone whether or not I know what I'm talking about. C) I assume you meant "we biologists do meaningful research". Or maybe you didn't, in which case I have another datum to support my hypothesis.
I actually had to look it up, Jenny Stapf, because I'm a medical transcriptionist, and the doctor said: "Will go ahead and get a sleep study to quantify and evaluate sleep disturbance and the daytime hypersomnolence."
Which made me twitch as I compulsively changed the word to "quantify". I *had* to check, just to clarify that I'm not dumb.
I mean, the doctor said:
"Will go ahead and get a sleep study to quantitate and evaluate sleep disturbance and the daytime hypersomnolence."
I am a nerd, and I admit it. I embrace it. And I'm not a biologist or a physicist, but I think both camps are brilliant! Hell, George Costanza aspired to be a marine biologist, so...
What...what does that say? Hmmm...
My understanding is that "quantify" refers to a mathematical derivation of numerical value (i.e. using a physics formula to place a numerical value on the gravitational pull), whereas "quantitate" is more akin to counting something (i.e. enumerating the amount of cytokines produced by a population of cells - no formula, just sophisticated counting).
Hope this helps someone.
OK, lets look at some other facts and relationships.
Beautification is, roughly, to make beautiful.
Hence beautify.
So quantification is to 'make a quantity' - which would fit with Anonymous' suggestion that this implies the use of a formula.
Whereas quantitation implies simply taking the quantity and reporting it, rather like dictation is simply taking the speech and reporting it.
So the paper I'm writing, that stimulated this search, will use quantitate because I'm just reporting the amount of something, a count not a formula-derived number.
Me? I'm an applied physicist, applied chemist, applied biochemist, and applied biologist.
Actually it all comes together in being a dermatologist.
I am a biologist, a cancer researcher to be specific and I came through this link to see if there is more information on the difference between the words. Instead I found that physicists need to assert their intelligence by the number of Google hits quantify vs quantitate gets.
Next time you get a check up and it involves quantitation of biomarkers make sure not to accept them unless they are quantified as well./chuckle
Wow, I can't believe people are still posting on this thing three years later. Awesome. I need to dig up the original paper and update the link, my Stanford account died when I left there for The Real World. Also, folks, follow the lead of the nice Ms. Kristian Swearingen: it's a joke. Bob Austin was my undergrad thesis advisor, and is one of the most pugnacious, dysfunctional, and self-absorbed people I have ever met.
As a biophysicist, I shall use the term "quantificate" to describe my data, so as to offend neither my biologist nor my physicist readers.
Without description/quantifying science can not be done. But, physics goes further and instead of saying huge, bigger, much much bigger, smaller, smallest, tiny etc. utilizes mathematical scales of units, such as kg, meter, Liter etc. Such units are not different from our shoe numbers(units) such as 7, 8, 9, or dress sizes(units) such as 2, 10, 14 etc. Without a shoe scale(units) shopping would be extremely difficult. Physics do similar scaling in science, but its scales(units) are a little bit complicated compared to shoe scales(units), because not simple mathematics of shoe size, but higher mathematics and geometry knowledge is required.
I must laugh. I am a surgeon with background in engineering and physics. I stumbled across this forum because I was wondering why the biologist I am working with kept changing quantify to quantitate in every manuscript that we wrote. Turns out mostly based on training.
Let me suggest a subtle difference that is analogous to the grocery store sign issue. A smart alec might note that “15 items or less” is grammatically flawed because less refers to an amount where individual items cannot be counted. It is better to use “fewer” because you can count groceries. Maybe "quantify" and "quantitate" are like that. You can express the quantity of dividing cells in a given microscopic field. Therefore you would quantify, or count. And that act would be quantification. But you can't really express the count of an abstract thing. Nevertheless, you might want to assign a number to this abstract thing, or at the very least there are more than one way to assign a number to the thing. Take for example the strength of mutant allele, or the degree to which that allele alters the phenotype. There may be nothing to count like microns or miliseconds or nanograms. But you could use the penetrance or expressivity of the mutant phenotype to quantitate, or as a way of quantitating the strength of the allele. So "quantify" may best be used when a thing can be directly counted, something concrete, and "quantitate" is to be used when one desires a numerical value to be assigned to something that is essentially abstract, but for which there may be some proxy or measurable consequence of this thing. (Or do I have the meanings reversed?) I'm only suggesting that a subtle difference in the essence of the thing being examined may explain why scientists in particular fields preferentially use one form over the other.
I am a biologist. I used to write preferentially "quantitate" until not long ago. What was my surprise to realize that now I am correcting my latest grant application, replacing every "quantitated" word and putting "quantified" instead! I decided to keep half and half.
What is going on???? LOL.
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