Sphalerite for Dummy Miners

Sphalerite specimen

If you look up at the top of this page, you'll probably figure out that the reason this blog is published is to expose freelancing fakes, people to whom income is more important than accuracy. Many of them scattered their work to multiple sites on the web in the era of the content farm, and today's DotD nominee is an example of such broadcasting. We already caught Andrew Kirmayer pretending knowledge of rocks for WiseGEEK, this time he's spreading it thick at the eHow niche CareerTrend.com: let's look at what Andy had to say in "How Is Sphalerite Mined?"

We don't really know what made Andy choose to write rock and mineral posts (mostly at WiseGEEK), but it probably wasn't that BFA in Creative Writing. Perhaps he took rocks for jocks and figured that made him an expert. Whatever the case, Kirmayer proved that he couldn't even copy and paste particularly well: of the six times he referred to the mineral in his text, he spelled it wrong four of them. No, Andrew, it is not "sphalarite"!

Come to think of it, Kirmayer never even mentioned that sphalerite is a mineral: the closest he comes to that is the introduction, in which he makes the foolish statement that,

"Sphalerite is obtained from underground mining. It is a zinc ore that is formed in veins, which are long layers of rocks and minerals that form underground."

WTF is this "long layers" business, d00d? A vein isn't a "layer," and veins aren't necessarily "long." Nowhere does Andrew mention that sphalerite is zinc sulfide (ZnS). Nowhere does he mention that sphalerite is usually found with other sulfides, especially galena (lead sulfide, PbS) and pyrite (iron sulfide, FeS₂). And would anyone with any knowledge at all of chemistry claim that,

"Sphalarite [sic] is an important compound because it is used to make zinc..."

...instead of saying that it is a source of zinc? No, they wouldn't! Kirmayer goes on to spray some boilerplate rubbish about mining across the page, with such scintillating factification as,

"An underground mine is comprised of a sophisticated network of tunnels, shafts and equipment. It is entered through a shaft, a horizontal tunnel or an adit..."

Our Andy definitely loves the rule of threes, doesn't he! He also gets to prattle about "dump trucks" and "sophisticated vehicles [and] rail systems" to impress the preteen boys out there. What this putz doesn't do is mention anything about separation of the multiple minerals mined in massive sulfide deposits – crushing and flotation, in general – or smelting of the sphalerite to refine the zinc. No, all Andy can manage to do to explain mining is blather bull like. "Modern-day underground mining is a highly technological, mechanized process." When we see rubbish like that, we know that some clueless freelancer just contributed another chunk of stupidification to the internet. Well, Andrew won't get away "Scott" free this time: Kirmayer gets a reward: another Dumbass of the Day award, to be precise.

copyright © 2018-2023 scmrak

SI - MINERALS