SEG 45 Final_qx4 - Society of Economic Geologists

OCTOBER 2005 • No 63 SEG NEWSLETTER 7
PRESIDENTIAL PERSPECTIVE
Economic Geology — Science or Profession?
Exactly 100 years ago, in the first issue
of Economic Geology, Dr. Fredrick L.
Ransome wrote in the journal’s first
article, “Geologists as a class have
looked upon the economic branch of
their science with rather languid interest
or have even regarded it as occupying
a somewhat lower plane where the
pure light of science is slightly dimmed
by the smoke of commercialism.”
The tension Ransome noted between
science and commercialism, between
those who work in Surveys or academic
laboratories and those who are
employed by mines or mineral exploration
companies is still with us. As
Ransome noted, it is a healthy tension
that enables our field to embrace the
wide range of the natural sciences and
their practical application.
However, over the past several
decades there appears to have been a
branching within economic geology
into an academic sector and an applied
sector. While many of the SEG’s publications
focus on the former, most of our
members work in the latter. To address
concerns of many of our industrial
members, SEG is sponsoring the 2006
meeting, Wealth Creation in the Minerals
Industry. While this meeting will aid in
remarrying the two sides of our Society,
these tensions have profound implications
for the future of the profession.
I have been lucky enough to work in
both industry and academia. There is
no doubt that they are different worlds.
Industry values discoveries and ways to
produce more metal more cheaply.
Science is critical in these endeavors,
but rewards in industry are for practical
applications. In academia, rewards are
given for publications and presentations,
and for successfully teaching and
graduating students. To get published
in the best journals (including Economic
Geology) requires “high tech” science
and application of analytical tools.
Good field mapping is valued but is
rarely published in Science or Nature.
Garnering research funding from mining
and exploration companies is
acknowledged in academia, but since
most companies refuse to pay full overhead
rates required by academic institutions
(at least in the United States and
increasingly in other countries), its
value for academic advancement is
much lower than fully overheaded
research funding from governmental
organizations such as the U.S. National
Science Foundation (NSF) or the
European Science Foundation.
The reward ladder in academia
results in academic geologists focusing
more and more on relatively narrow
research questions using very sophisticated
analytical capabilities. The results
are scientifically fascinating and provide
important guides to our thinking
on the formation of ore deposits, but the
research rarely leads directly to new discoveries
or novel means of mineral production.
Most young economic geologists
throughout the world are trained at
universities. The professors doing the
training are excellent scientists who do
outstanding research, but increasingly
they have less and less industrial experience.
Many have not worked in a
mine or been actively engaged at a
managerial level in mineral exploration.
As a consequence, many economic
geology students graduate with a
high level of scientific competence and
the ability to think critically, but little
practical experience or sense of community
values for the industrial field they
are entering.
Current economic geology education
has close parallels in what is happening
in American business schools. Professors
Bennis and O’Toole of the University of
Southern California, writing recently in
the Harvard Business Review, stated,
“During the past several decades, many
leading B schools have quietly adopted
an inappropriate—and ultimately selfdefeating—model
of academic excellence.
Instead of measuring themselves
in terms of the competence of their
graduates, or by how well their faculties
understand important drivers of business
performance, they measure themselves
almost solely by the rigor of their
scientific research. Some of the research
produced is excellent, but because so little
of it is grounded in actual business
practices, the focus of graduate business
education has become increasingly circumscribed—and
less and less relevant
to practitioners” (2005).
The situation Bennis and O’Toole
describe for American business schools
mirrors what we have seen worldwide
in economic geology
over the past
half century.
Economic geology
in the academic
sphere has
become scientifically
rigorous.
The results of the
research provide important insights into
mantle processes, magma differentiation
and cooling, metal behavior in critical
fluids, etc. While these insights can
help clever exploration geologists determine
new models for ore genesis, the
research rarely has an immediate bottom
line impact on business. More
emphasis is needed to ensure that the
science developed in academia can be
applied industrially.
Perhaps more importantly, academic
research is not only conducted by professors
but also by the students earning
advanced (MS and PhD) degrees in economic
geology. While some of these students
will go on to become academics
and follow in their mentors’ footsteps,
most students are looking for employment
in industry. Are what they are
being taught and the research they are
conducting really relevant for the business
world they will enter? I think it is
clear that in many cases, the answer is
“no.”
Company disillusionment with
academia and the consequent difficulty
in securing significant industrial financial
support for academic programs
may have much to do with the differing
goals of academic and industry economic
geologists. We all respond to
rewards. For most academics this is
gaining tenure through high quality
scientific publications and successful
governmental research grants. The
tenure process generally does not place
a high value on producing graduates
who easily and successfully make the
transition into industry.
Most academic economic geologists,
or even departments with a focus on
economic geology research, do not have
the background to be able to teach the
practical basis of economic geology—
which includes excellent geology and
geochemistry but also the values and
pitfalls of differing
exploration geophysical
MURRAY W. HITZMAN
SEG President
2005
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