[meteorite-list] differing viewpoints - scientists, dealers, collectors

[Randy Korotev]

Some comments from a new-comer to the list...

I am a scientist who studies lunar meteorites and have as much right 
as anyone to be regarded as an expert in the field of lunar 
geochemistry.  Nevertheless, in the past 2 years I have made formal 
sample requests to 3 different museums holding the type specimens of 
certain lunar meteorites, all Dhofars, and have been either denied or 
ignored.  In this sense, the "system" doesn't always 
work.  Meanwhile, samples of some of the the very meteorites I want 
were being sold on ebay for affordable prices.  I work for one of the 
best endowed private universities in the US.  Nevertheless, there is 
no mechanism for either my department or the university to buy me 
samples for my research.  From the university's point of view, if my 
science is worth doing, then I should write a proposal to NASA or 
NSF, my peers should find it worthy of funding, and all expenses for 
my research should be paid by the research grant.  Universities don't 
fund research, they teach students.  (Think about it: If you were 
paying $50k/year to send your kid to this university, would you want 
some of that money going to buy meteorites for guys like 
me?)  Government agencies fund research, and getting those dollars is 
fiercely competitive (as it should be).  From the point of view of 
NASA and NSF, however, all or most hot-desert meteorites are stolen 
property, so I can't budget the cost of Dhofar meteorite purchases 
into my proposal.  Through some creative financing, I have been able 
over the last year to purchase some of meteorites that I need.  There 
are several Dhofars, however, that I want but for which I can't find 
a source that I can afford and can't get for free from the museums 
holding the type specimens.

A frustration is that my main interest is the geochemistry of the 
Moon.  The lunar meteorites, as samples from random locations, in 
conjunction with recent orbiting missions Clementine and Lunar 
Prospector, have seriously changed our view of the Moon.  So to me, 
the lunar meteorites are an important research tool.  Many of the 
hot-desert lunar meteorites have been first characterized by 
scientists with knowledge of meteorites but no special knowledge or 
interest in the Moon.  Consequently, these scientists don't ask the 
questions I ask, and many of the initial descriptions have been 
erroneous or misleading, from the point of view of persons with 
experience in the Apollo collection.  So, although it may seem to the 
outsider that any lunar meteorite described in the Meteoritical 
Bulletin, for example, has been "studied by scientists," for many of 
the lunar meteorites (at least) the scientific information they carry 
about the Moon has not really been extracted.

I know many scientists who would love to go meteorite hunting.  The 
waiting list of volunteers for ANSMET is very long.  The issue is not 
desire among scientists, but who's going to pay the bills.  No U.S. 
government agency is going to fund meteorite collection efforts in 
northern Africa or Oman.  The benefit/cost ratio would be regarded 
(right or wrong) as much too low compared, say, to field work in the 
same areas by geophysicists or paleoanthropologists.  Read Bill 
Cassidy's "Meteorites, Ice, and Antarctica" to see how much trouble 
he had in the 1970's getting NSF to fund the ANSMET project.  And 
that was a really good idea.


~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
Randy L. Korotev                           phone: (314) 935-5637
Research Associate Professor               fax:   (314) 935-7361
Washington University in Saint Louis       korotev at wustl.edu
Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences   http://epsc.wustl.edu/

erything you need to know about lunar meteorites:
http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/moon_meteorites.html  
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