Geological Society Library - Burlington House

We spent this afternoon in the library of the Geological Society in Burlington House, Piccadilly, looking for an obscure article about the age determined for a particular rock in southern Malawi published back in 1965. It is an article cited in many academic publications, but it turns out, they were all just citing the author who appears to have got his own citation wrong.

Not that he didn't do the work of ageing that particular rock, but that he didn't publish the results where he said he had. Then all the publications since by all the various authors citing him have been wrong. It's a bit of a case of scientific Chinese whispers. The puzzle is that we are yet to locate his original data.

Splendid library though - even if our goose chase didn't lay any golden eggs. (oops - mixing my metaphors here somewhat - wot ho! ;)