In a letter to the editor that appeared last week, William Johnson claimed that my article “Fusion key step in fire assaying for PGEs” (T.N.M., Feb. 25-March 3/02) contained a plagiarism. I feel obliged to respond that I have not had the benefit of reading John Van Loon’s 10-year-old paper from which I allegedly stole the phrase “Fire assay is the preferred method for assaying rocks for PGEs.”
Unfortunately, there are only so many ways of saying that PGEs are best determined by fire assay, and I find it challenging to find new ways to describe a method that has been documented since the time of Georgius Agricola (1494-1555).
Owing to space constraints, I did not detail the fate of lead during cupellation. Whether lead is adsorbed in the cupel from a liquid state or as sublimation of lead oxide that volatilizes (the lead oxide forming during heating of the lead in oxidizing conditions) is probably not important to the average reader of The Northern Miner.
The article may have been repetitious for some readers, but it did not contain plagiarisms.
Lynda Bloom
Principal, Analytical Solutions
Toronto
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