LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dear President Wolverson:
This is in reply to your President’s column in the Jan/Feb/ Mar 2021 issue of The Professional Geologist. Your article stresses the importance of remaining open-minded at the start of the data-gathering process, and retaining that open-mind- edness throughout. An experience from my career highlights the importance of doing just that.
The time-frame was 1979-1980. My firm was engaged in examining gold prospects along the Mother Lode of California, an effort that was ultimately greeted with success. At one very attractive property, some serious exploration had been done a few years previously by a well-known competitor. That exploration included several diamond drill holes. The owner of the property was from a mining family, and although he was partially incapacitated physically he was still mentally alert. He had specified, in the lease, that he would be provided with copies of all factual data and any drill core (or cuttings) developed during the work. The former firm had also gener- ously provided him a copy of their report upon their recessing the project.
My supervisor and I eagerly read the report and noted that the company had been guided by a theory of deposit formation that called on “exhalite” as the rock-type that would host the gold values. Then we examined the core and saw relatively thin intercepts of the “exhalite” (an attractive, green colored
Dear Editor:
The authors of the article “Learning in the Outdoors: Field-based undergradu- ate education during the COVID-19 pandemic – why not?” in the January- February-March 2021 issue of The Professional Geologist provided a detailed description of the plan they used to prevent the occurrence and transmission of the virus during the field course. However, the efforts that were undertaken to prepare the course and execute it put a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress, anxiety and fear upon the professors and staff who were involved. In addition, the students who attended the course were subject to the same stress, anxiety and fear.
The negative experience has its origin in the actions of the professors and staff as they undertook an overabundance of caution. Being hypercautious has its place in hospitals and doctors’ offic- es and, maybe, some enclosed spaces. Though IT IS NOT APPROPRIATE with field camp conditions!
The reason I say this is because the students and field staff had already effectively quarantined for 14 days. After this, anyone who had symptoms should have stayed home – which I surmise they did. This leaves only one more step to take to ensure that the field camp will be disease free and successful. That is
8 TPG •
Apr.May.Jun 2021
rock comprised of quartz, ankerite, and mariposite). All the “exhalite” intercepts had been carefully sawed and assayed. The intervals between the “exhalite” zones, however, were not split and had not been assayed. Since they were comprised of heavily brecciated rock (typically a dark slate with quartz cementing the fragments), we concluded that assays were in order. It turned out that the brecciated zones between the “exhalite” zones were indeed mineralized, with a gold content typically about 50% of that found in the zones they had assayed. The expanded assaying resulted in an increase in the thickness of the “intercepts of potential interest” ranging from two to ten times what the previous company had concluded.
Bottom line – they were prisoners of their hypothesis. If it didn’t look like “exhalite,” it simply wasn’t worth the minute cost of the assay. Let me state here that in the time period mentioned, the cost of acquiring diamond drill core outweighed the cost of fire assaying by a factor well in excess of 10 to 1.
Lesson learned – while the development of ore genesis mod- els can be a valuable exercise, geologists must never let the model govern how a problem is approached. Before one can follow the data, the data must be fully and completely acquired.
Sincerely,
Peter Dohms, CPG-7141 Payson, Arizona
to have everyone tested no more than several days before arriving at the camp location and having each person pres- ent a document verifying that they had tested negative for the virus. Once you have reached this point, then you have a group of people who are almost certainly clean and virus free. That’s all the staff and professors had to do.
At such a point in the camp experi- ence, it wouldn’t matter what the condi- tions were as long as the camp itself and the vehicles and the equipment had been previously sanitized. Driving with every- one wearing masks, the windows down and the air conditioner blasting made no sense! According to articles I have read on fluid mechanics, the common masks used by the public leak. The articles go on to say that the chances of an infected person wearing a mask spreading the virus to another person who is wearing a mask and standing six feet or less away are 30%. Yes, wearing a mask is better than nothing, but if everyone is virus negative at the camp, then why in the world are people wearing masks? This makes no sense.
Additionally, the field participants were outside the great majority of the time. According to the doctors I have consulted with, the chance of catching the virus in the great outdoors is very low even without a mask. There is always
at least a very slight breeze to blow your breath away.
The field camp I attended was at a college owned hacienda (a medium sized house with communal sleeping, eating and washing areas). Trips had to be made into the local town to wash clothes, buy food, maybe for the students to stroll up and down the streets and depressur- ize and forget about the fieldwork for a while, get needed supplies and service the vehicles – all things that must be done. This would be the only time that everyone would risk coming into contact with the virus. Again, however, if every- one is cautious (not fearful), being close to infected town folk can be avoided. This is in contrast to the stupid mistakes made by some baseball and football play- ers. The virus is not a tiny bar magnet and people are not made of metal. Getting close to someone will not get you “zapped.” Spraying disinfectant would not be necessary unless a car mechanic handled the vehicles. It would only make sense three or four days after the trip to town to do temperature checks – which are not worthwhile for asymptomatic individuals. Even a temperature of 99 degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t mean much because everyone’s temperature varies during the day and the seasons.
The virus free students should have been allowed to sit together without
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