This is the article from the Northern Miner's Letter To The Editor
RESULTS POINT TO PROMOTION
Regarding the article "Band-Ore takes up new gold prospect," (T.N.M.,Feb. 8-14/99), why would The Northern Miner allow a junior company such as Band-ore to release such unjustified results? I am referring to the "grab samples with grades between 1.2 and 1,878 grams gold per tonne." Such obvious self-promotion of a junior is clearly unwarranted and misrepresentative of the facts.
Perhaps The Northern Miner publishes any grade that a company releases without questioning the motive. The readers, however, can see through this obvious self-promotion. No self-respecting geologist would allow an anomalous grade of 1,878 grams per tonne to be published. I have to ask myself if Band-Ore employs any geologists. How could this uncut grade get to press? In an industry trying to recover from the damage of the Bre-X fiaso, why does The Northern Miner allow such absurd values to appear within the walls of its influence?
I am disappointed that such reckless reporting of mineral values still appears in the press, and ask you to more stringent when reporting such preliminary values. Promoting such unreproducible results give Band-Ore, The Northern Miner and the whole industry a black eye.
John Korczak
Earth Sciences Student
University of Waterloo
The Editor's Note Reads:
The Northern Miner has no authority to regulate what information a company may release, but it does investigate such releases for their legitimacy and newsworthiness. Furthermore, geologists must report all material facts-whether they respect themselves or not.
These grades were from grab samples, a sample bag, not of the outcrop it came from; and our report correctly identified them as such.
Cutting assays has no theoretical basis in statistics, and cutting assays from grab samples in neither statistically nor geologically defensible; the normal practice is to use the grades of grab samples only as an indication that the rock is mineralized, not as a measure of the potential metal content of a rock. Reporting uncut assays from grab samples (as long as they are correctly identified as such) is neither reckless nor promotional in our view. |
