The Right Words to Describe Comparisons

Research often involves making comparisons. Whether you are testing a gene mutation in cells or a new drug treatment in patients, you are likely comparing outcomes. When you write about those outcomes, you make inferences that you need to clearly convey to your readers. And the words you choose to describe those inferences can affect clarity.

Many scientific and medical authors use the phrases compared to and compared with interchangeably. But these phrases have different meanings.

When examining similarities or differences between one thing and another in detail, use compared with. When comparing only one entity to another (ie, a single similarity or dissimilarity, or one class to another class) without analysis, use compared to.

Examples

The cells treated with the compound had greater ATP compared with cells treated with vehicle control.

Few lipid-lowering drugs can compare to the effectiveness of statins.

Most often, scientific and medical writers should use compared with. However, if you are still not sure which phrase is correct, use versus or than instead. This change will also buy you an extra word so that you can get closer to that dreaded word limit you may be facing.

Examples

Apoptosis was higher in cells treated with the inhibitor versus cells treated with the control.

The patients treated with drug A had lower blood pressure than patients treated with drug B.