Geophysics Education - Later discussion on Professional Training

and would also contribute to the post-war employment. -As far as the future is concerned, I doubt whether any of the present geophysical methods will ever be developed to directly indicate ore. However, the geochemical methods and certain combinations between chemical and geological methods now used might be the answer to our prayers for direct and more definite methods of determining the quality of the ore or its relative metal content. Geochemical and spectrochemical analysis of minute content in ground waters, in soil or in plants and trees, living or dead, will be extremely important and I would venture to predict that in the very near future each mining or exploration company and each assay oflice will have its own spectroscope equipped for accurate chemical analysis, not only to guide the daily work in the mine, but also for identifying ores as well as for guiding exploration, geological mapping and the evaluation of geophysical indications. These methods, although they are still in their infancy, promise very much for the future. Radioactivity methods could also be helpful when sufficient facilities for radioactivity determination can be made available. They have already been used to a great extent in oil exploration and experiments have shomn great promise for ore exploration also. As for future surveys of large areas, the exploration for physical contrasts will be made from the air, using aeroplanes, helicopters, etc. Already electrical and magnetic methods have been designed whereby the instruments are carried in the aircraft and by automatic recording the location of anomalies is made in a simple enough manner. It should be possible in this way to cover, say, a square mile in an hour. Later Discussion Replies to Dr Lundberg. J. B. Macelwane.*—Someone has said that if a person knows his subject well enough he can explain it in words of one syllable. The point is well taken and I think the converse is also true. If a person cannot explain a subject clearly in simple words, it is either because he has not sufficient command of the language, or he is not master of his subject. Now it is obvious, it seems to me, that the remedy for both of these unfortunate conditions lies not in less education, but in more. If Dr. Lundberg has met geophysicists who confused and discouraged prospective clients by their inability to talk the language of the mine owner or of the mining engineer or geologist, the fault most probably lay in the geophysicist's lack of sufficient training; but it may also have been the want of ordinary common sense, which no amount of education can supply. It is hard to understand the position taken by Dr. Lundberg. Does he regret his own extensive training? noes he wish to say that he would have had greater success in geophysics if he had been only a mine hand with an instrument and a rule of thumb? As a matter of fact, I find it rather difficult to account for his presentation before this Committee on Geophysics of an emotionally distorted picture of the Report of the Committee on Geophysical Education, after the lapse of an entire year since the Report was read and discussed in its proper place, unless he honestly thinks he is handicapped by his knowledge and training and wishes to warn the whole profession against a similar fate. I regret that I am obliged to disagree so emphatically with Dr. Lundberg's thesis— but I believe it would be dangerous if left unchallenged, both because of the inaccurate statements it contains concerning the recommendations made in the Report and because of the ultimate discredit that would be bound to fall upon genuine geophysics if Dr. Lundberg's recommendations were extensively followed out. S. F. Kelly.*-—The argument that a science and its practitioners can be improved by debasing the standard of educational preparation is indeed a strange argument to come from the pen of a man with the education of Dr. Hans Lundberg. In criticising the Committee report, moreover, he has to a certain extent set up a straw man to belabor. The statement that the Committee report recommends that