[meteorite-list] Lake Eyre meteorite 'Crown property', researchers required to hand findings over

Sat Jan 16 12:41:21 EST 2016

It is to the point where you cannot even communicate with a young bureaucrat 
these days.  I wrote a well-thought out letter and mistakenly used the words 
"mankind" and "forefathers" and was accused of being sexist.  Needless to 
say, I received no intelligent response concerning the content of the letter 
and have given up trying.  Perhaps I should go back to school and relearn 
the English language.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Raremeteorites via Meteorite-list" 
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2016 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Lake Eyre meteorite 'Crown 
property',researchers required to hand findings over

> "rapid progress depends on the intelligent cooperation of the layman,"
>
> The word "layman" has been banned due to Political Correctness. It should 
> be "layperson" or not used at all.
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Carl Agee via Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> To: "Galactic Stone & Ironworks" <meteoritemike at gmail.com>
> Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; "ian macleod" 
> <ianmacca81 at hotmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2016 9:02 AM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Lake Eyre meteorite 'Crown property', 
> researchers required to hand findings over
>
>
>> Not to bore everyone, but I'll repost thisexcerpt from Lincoln LaPaz's
>> (founder of IOM)
>> "Space Nomads: Meteorites in Sky, Field, and Laboratory". It is as
>> true today as it was when the IOM was founded in 1944! Also relevant
>> to this discussion I believe...
>>
>>
>> "Meteorite hunting, unlike pure mathematics, cannot be conducted with
>> success solely by publicity-shy individuals comfortably seated in
>> armchairs. Unlike the chemist, who buys his research materials from
>> catalogs; the bacteriologist, who brews up his cultures at will in a
>> laboratory; and the botanist, who finds the objects of his
>> experimentation in conveniently located greenhouse and herbarium, the
>> meteoriticist is in large measure dependent on the general public for
>> the specimens with which he works. In meteoritics, as in perhaps no
>> other science, rapid progress depends on the intelligent cooperation
>> of the layman, that fortunate individual destined, because of his
>> ubiquitousness, not only to witness all meteorites yet to fall, but
>> also, sooner or later, to stumble upon many of those that have already
>> fallen..."
>>
>>
>> *************************************
>> Carl B. Agee
>> President, Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth
>> Sciences (COMPRES)
>> Director and Curator, Institute of Meteoritics
>> Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
>> MSC03 2050
>> University of New Mexico
>> Albuquerque NM 87131-1126
>>
>> Tel: (505) 750-7172
>> Fax: (505) 277-3577
>> Email: agee at unm.edu
>> http://meteorite.unm.edu/people/carl_agee/
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:04 AM, Galactic Stone & Ironworks via
>> Meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Ian and List,
>>>
>>> Yes, we can all play keyboard king and tell the governments and the
>>> world how we think things should be done. There will never be an ideal
>>> world and compromises must be made to keep everyone relatively happy
>>> (or at least content or apathetic). I agree that nobody's system is
>>> perfect, regardless of national boundaries.
>>>
>>> Comparing meteorites to collecting baseball cards is disingenuous.
>>> Rock and mineral collecting is one of the oldest expressions of
>>> geology. Amateur participation in that field has a long established
>>> history that has benefited museums and science over the years. For
>>> some people, meteorites are another rock to collect. For some they are
>>> research material. For some they are national treasures. Ultimately,
>>> who "owns" a meteorite? Do we really want some bureaucrat deciding
>>> that? Isn't this a case where common sense (ha!) should apply?  Or,
>>> call the lawyers and give them a pile of money to figure it out.
>>>
>>> I do not see the kind of rampant fraud and chicanery that Ian is
>>> talking about. Sure, any marketplace has crooks (some vendors, some
>>> buyers) and one has to only look at other collectible markets like
>>> autographs or Tiffany glass to see that fraud is "rampant" there was
>>> well. It all comes down to trust. If you don't trust the vendor's
>>> honesty and expertise, then avoid their sales pitches.
>>>
>>> "> I constantly see deception, fraud, ridiculous pricing, items stolen 
>>> out of
>>>> countries, governments and scientists disrespected, incorrectly 
>>>> described
>>>> items, dubious provenance, destroyed samples, tiny fragments, endless
>>>> provenance hand balling etc etc"
>>>
>>> Where are you looking exactly?  eBay?  Craigslist?  Boot sales?  You
>>> can also buy a million types of snake oil at those same venues. It
>>> doesn't mean it's a problem that is endemic in any given field that
>>> sells or buys at that venue. Most known members of this mailing list
>>> are trustworthy. We all know who is and who isn't.  And the people who
>>> are crooks get run out of town pretty quick. There are a few of us who
>>> might be eccentrics, anti-socials, egotists, blowhards, or some other
>>> species of the common jerk, but you know who to trust when it comes to
>>> authenticity. The field sorts itself out and the informed buyer
>>> chooses from well-established and reputable sources.
>>>
>>> Nobody likes thieves or scammers and the only issue I have with the
>>> list of negative attributes on your list is "tiny fragments".  As
>>> someone who has owned, traded, and sold his share of tiny fragments,
>>> that is not a negative thing that should be lumped in with thievery.
>>>
>>> As I am sure you are aware, most scientific analysis doesn't require
>>> large volumes of material, especially redundant materials for
>>> diminishing/no scientific gain. Even a 3mg Bessey Speck is big enough
>>> for the microprobe and then some.  It's scientific value might be
>>> extremely limited if that speck represents yet another unremarkable H5
>>> W4 from the NWA DCA.
>>>
>>> What about the samples from scientifically-interesting material like
>>> NWA 7038?  How much science could be done with a "tiny fragment" of
>>> that?  Speaking of remarkable meteorites with scientific value, the
>>> recent Martian NWA 7038 was found by someone who never saw the inside
>>> of a classroom, traded to another person with no degrees, and sold to
>>> another guy with no letters after his name. Middle level dealers
>>> bought and sold some pieces after it trickled down into the market,
>>> and now people are paying $20-$50 for a crumb weighing less than 20mg.
>>> If we had waited on a juried collection of bureaucrat-approved dandies
>>> to make that recovery, "Black Beauty" would be buried in the desert
>>> until all of it's value to science was eroded to nothing.
>>>
>>> Now, not much of that particular meteorite (or it's pairings) is on
>>> the collector market waiting to be bought like a baseball card. But, a
>>> "tiny fragment" can cost a day's work for some people, and does that
>>> make it less valuable or less ethical? Should only well-heeled (or
>>> connected) people of letters be allowed to collect meteorites? Should
>>> I buy a tiny fragment of something for my collection (or research), or
>>> should we budget-limited souls take our unwashed minds back to the
>>> fleamarket and rummage for Beanie Babies and old postcards?
>>>
>>> If somebody is breaking the law to hunt (or buy,trade,sell,collect)
>>> meteorites, then there are obviously laws already in place against
>>> fraud and theft that need to be enforced. If somebody in the IMCA is
>>> crooked, call them out and report them to the board. If somebody on
>>> this List is crooked, call them out and let them answer for their
>>> shady dealings.
>>>
>>> But, let's not act like some government or board of academics should
>>> be the judge and jury of who gets to keep a meteorite found on private
>>> property, or to decide who the owner of said meteorite should be able
>>> to give/sell/trade it to for everyone's mutual satisfaction.
>>>
>>> I didn't mean to offend the hard working and ethical hunters in
>>> Australia who abide by the rules and make recoveries that are
>>> available to science. When I called out Australia, I did not mean -
>>> "Ooooh look at Australia, their government is dumb and these people
>>> can't trust their own citizens to own or trade a meteorite".  What I
>>> meant was this : take a look at Morocco or the US by comparison. Many
>>> more finds are made, and made available to science because the process
>>> of acquiring these finds does not involve a chain of forms in
>>> triplicate, the approval of a ten-layer bureaucracy, and some
>>> unelected yahoo deciding who keeps what and what it might be worth if
>>> sold or traded.
>>>
>>> Does abuse happen in Morocco and the US?  Yes, and existing laws in
>>> those countries address those abuses. It's already illegal to smuggle
>>> commodities. Trying to sneak an undeclared chocolate bar across
>>> international borders can land you in a locked room. Nobody in their
>>> right mind would want to sit in a Algerian jail for grand theft. It
>>> doesn't mean people won't try it anyway, but that doesn't mean a
>>> distant outside federal/imperial bureaucracy should have jurisdiction
>>> over the issue.
>>>
>>> I don't know about you, I'd rather deal with the person who lives near
>>> me, might know me, and has something in common with me - not some guy
>>> with drank his way to a degree, wears a clip-on tie, and lives in a
>>> walled compound 1000 miles away.
>>>
>>> In the end, conquerors write history books and make the laws. Ask the
>>> American Indians who should own the meteorites that fall on American
>>> soil. They are the rightful owners of the land, but a bunch of old
>>> white guys with clip-on ties now call the shots here. Or, ask the
>>> aborigines in Australia who own the meteorites that fall there. Oh,
>>> you can't, because England used it for penal colony and then the
>>> inmates took over. Or, ask the Argentines who gets to keep the Campos.
>>> Oh wait, the original Campo owners were killed or bred out of
>>> existence by Spanish and Portuguese "missionaries". (at least they are
>>> in a better place now, right?  The savages weren't landed gentry or
>>> men of letters, so who cares.)
>>>
>>> Sorry Ian, I am not firing on your personally. I just get a little
>>> ticked off at attitudes like that in the original article that started
>>> this discussion. It reminded me of that terrible hit piece on the
>>> "meteorite black market" in the NYT a few years back and that the IMCA
>>> published a rebuttal to it.
>>>
>>> As far as tiny fragments being bad or negative, that is personal to me
>>> also because I collect specimens of all types, including micromounts
>>> and I trade in "tiny fragments". I have over 100 localities in my
>>> collection that are all authentic. I can provide free samples large
>>> enough for analysis to any authoritative institution that wishes to
>>> test their validity. I trust my sources that well. If I didn't, I
>>> wouldn't have acquired the specimen in the first place and I certainly
>>> would not have offered it to someone else if there was ever any doubt
>>> about it's authenticity.  Any good dealer/trader/collector would
>>> adhere to those standards, regardless of whether or not they had an
>>> IMCA number.
>>>
>>> I gotta ask though, what is "provenance hand balling"? I have not
>>> heard that one before. I assume it means falsifying or obfuscating
>>> some part of the chain of custody? Or, am I just dense and missed this
>>> one.
>>>
>>> Happy Huntings Ian. Nothing personal to you or Australian people. It's
>>> more my frustration at unwarranted or incompetent government
>>> intrustion into private or scientific affairs.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> MikeG
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1/15/16, ian macleod via Meteorite-list
>>> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi List, we can bang on about laws all day (which actually vary here in
>>>> Australia between states) and also point fingers at scientists and 
>>>> museum
>>>> staff we don't know. At the end of the day the law is the law...Deal 
>>>> with
>>>> it
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There is no elitism going on, these guys are nice enough they just have 
>>>> to
>>>> make a point and warning in respect to laws.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bob is right the Canadian model is a better system. The USA has too 
>>>> much
>>>> freedom that is abused, Australia the opposite occurs
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The idea meteorites are not found or reported in Australia is far from
>>>> accurate.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> See the USA enjoys a 'few' remaining labs that processing many 
>>>> kilograms of
>>>> potentially stolen property out of NWA, this has given the appearance 
>>>> of
>>>> very active work, and that something new is happening......respectfully 
>>>> I
>>>> beg to differ
>>>>
>>>> We now have 50,000 meteorites and only 6 or so that we have orbit data 
>>>> for.
>>>> The orbit ones were all found by camera networks NOT guys all over 
>>>> Africa
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So when it comes to collecting the next find like baseball cards or 
>>>> wanting
>>>> to see meteoritics evolve.....I chose evolution
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I constantly see deception, fraud, ridiculous pricing, items stolen out 
>>>> of
>>>> countries, governments and scientists disrespected, incorrectly 
>>>> described
>>>> items, dubious provenance, destroyed samples, tiny fragments, endless
>>>> provenance hand balling etc etc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> and this is coming from many IMCA and non IMCA sellers and hunters
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So sorry lads Im sticking with the scientists on this one and the with 
>>>> few
>>>> people in the private collecting meteorite community I trust....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ian
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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