Table 2.

Five points and counterpoints why laboratories are reticent to introduce LC-MS/MS. Points of detractions are provided from an online social media blog. Counterpoints are provided by the author (RG)

No.	Point of detraction [6]	Counterpoint
1	“Mass Spec is Too Complicated”	Quality Management (QM) is also complicated. A director of a large laboratory said “It is easier to train a diagnostic laboratory scientist in MS, as they understand the background, than to take someone from e.g. a research background with MS experience and train them in pathology” [anonymous personal communication].
2	“Mass Specs Are Too Big”	But many of our automated analysers are also large.
3	“Too Expensive”	Agree MS does seem expensive, but this is because we are use to reagent rental agreements from some immunoassay companies. It is important to create a business case to demonstrate return on investment.
4	“Testing Takes Too Long”	This is currently usually true, but will probably change in the future as MS becomes more automated.
5	“We use GC-MS/MS, and it Works Fine”	There is still an important place for GC-MS or GC-MS/MS in the laboratory, but the advantage of LC-MS/MS is that derivatisation is not mandatory. In addition, GC-MS or MS/MS has a clear role in discovery applications as highlighted by Dias and Koal [10].