Loads of untrained eyes at work, carefully untraining themselves.
When you send 500 samples for assay, the lab does not visually inspect each speciment with a trained eye. More likely they have a sample production line where all jobs have been assembly line automated. So you get a standard label made and then a crush and sample, with 1-2 assay tuns being riffled off. The bulk stays in a bag.. Once past this stage it is in the system and all that emerges are results.
Do not forget these are not rich samples. they run from under a gram to 10 or so. 10 grams in a tonne is less than one half a cubic centimeter. In a 32 gram sample it is a few specs. Do not forget that De Guzman was no fool, he would have sifted the gold first to make all the bits real small and hard to spot, let alone characterise by the naked eye. The intrained eye, forget it. SOme people seem to think there are big lumps involved here. They are far smaller than fly screen size as that is the only way to salt evenly...use fine dust. At that size you would need an eye glass tp pick them out. True the alluvials would be smoothed and flatted by stream processes, and matte lustered, and the true grit(hard rock gold) would be sharp edged and reflective. Normet is oof the hook. Kilborn and Lavalin were certainly non compos mentis to blindly accept this kind of crap. However they were hired by BRE-X and could be fired, so a bit of respect(fear) entered their souls and they ignored their own wiser counsel.
Forget blaming Barrick. Barrick was waltzed around and kept in the dark. There was enough ambiguity in their own samples for them to balk, but not enough to hurl javelins(nolo cataphractera) That means they will not throw cats for fear of being clawed. So they threw no cats. Neither would I have thrown cats. At this time the emperor was still fully clothed, and could you imagine the dark umbra around Barrick if they made a false accusation. In addition they might have had a non disclosure agreements that would choke a Barrickgator.
Bill |
