Chief - toma, here - your questions as answers are as indicative of reality as anyone can project... but, perhaps i can add some clarity. no, you can ever duplicate a "grab" sample and you are correct in your presumption that a zero result can be obtained from a point directly next to a previous location. but, this does not say that the information can not be verified or for that matter means that it has been refuted. it also does not in any manner of speaking say that your first sample was "bad," - only QA/QC can do this.
if the two values are widely disparate, it suggests that the variability of the formation - how much the concentration changes with any unit change in distance - may be high, and more sampling is needed to define this variability (unless of course the average concentration is high enough to mine - then sampling can begin). to complicate things, variability will also change as one moves through the formation. if this can be defined in some manner, all the better.
all of this, hoewever, is exactly what a "third party" verification is about. was the intitial report accurate? if not, what needs to done to better define the potential of the formation.
by the way, the good geologists, scientists, and engineers will let only the data tell the story. if they all can look at the same data set, they will all see that it is either "world-class" or a dust-bowl. if they disagree, then the data is likely incomplete, or their individual definitions of world-class and dust bowl are too different to compare.
hope this helps, toma |
