Where was this abstract presented?

yeah, as I implied in my post, I wasn't trying to be a debbie-downer here... I really hadn't even originally planned to comment on this thread (but alas, I can't pretend I hadn't viewed it... lol).

I had first just glanced at the slides (certainly the concept is quite cool, and also quite plausible) and thought, eh, ok, another kinda iffy EDS study, a bit surprised that the authors missed seeing the various mineral misspellings, but then, it was probably a student's first shot at the big leagues (well, since it's SW AAPG, maybe not quite the big leagues (lol), but a national meeting nonetheless), maybe hastily put together at the last minute (as many presentations inevitably can be, some of mine included), and ultimately it's a learning experience for next time.

But then returning to this thread, I saw there'd been no critical discussion on the content (after all, the whole presentation is right there), saw only "we should feature this as an article" and "just imagine what other geodes will hold?" (with an undertone, in my mind, of "just imagine what MY geodes from there will hold"... making me wonder if "sylvite" was going to start showing up in our Keokuk locality listings?), and then further discovered the authors weren't amateurs or undergrads, but actual professionals.  That all motivated me to be the grumpy curmudgeon I can sometimes be, and say, "hey, wait a minute, folks... let's not be too hasty".

Kevin noted above the authors' plan to write this up and submit it as a paper.  They should.  But it might benefit them to be aware in advance of the kinds of criticisms they're going to get if they are looking at submitting to a real peer-reviewed journal, so they can address those issues in their discussion.  Of course, if they pick one of those pay-to-play journals, I guess it doesn't matter what they write, but that may scare me even more.

For me, their use of the generic "REE mineral" doesn't really bother me, because typically all the REE (except Pm, of course) are present in a mineral, and the Levinson suffix we would see in a species name and derived from a detailed analysis just means the REE to the left and right of the named peak are smoothly declining (usually... there are geochemically interesting exceptions).

In this case, using a more precise "LREE mineral" (since they specifically note the notable "light REE" La and Ce contents of their sample) might be more informative.  And as challenging as it is to measure the REE even by WDS, attempting to do so by EDS is a fool's errand.  Indeed, La and Ce are the only two essentially un-interfered REE (un-interfered by other REE, that is... still challenges with Ba, Ti, V, Cr), so had these authors reported EDS-derived Pr, Nd or other REE, I would have called foul on that too.  So glad to see they didn't try that.

And especially if their REE mineral is one of the numerous fluoro/hydroxy-carbonates, I wouldn't expect them to be very successful in characterizing their mineral with EDS anyway... between all the insensitive (or possibly even unmeasurable?) light elements and the overlapping REE, trying to differentiate species from among the whole bastnasite/parisite/synchynite/etc. families would be a huge nebulous mess.

Excellent!

Thanks Kevin.

If it was intended as some follow-up to my earlier criticism of the research, let me be clear the latter was not related to where the authors did their work, but only that they didn't provide sufficient detail in their slides to discount the possibility that some of their IDs could perhaps alternatively be explained simply by misinterpretation of their EDS data (in general, not an uncommon occurrence) or possibly even a bit of sample contamination. Whether or not those could be issues at play here is independent of where the work is done, but rather with the level of experience of the researchers with the particular instrumentation/samples.  Hopefully once they write their paper and it's been properly peer-reviewed, some of these questions may be answered.

As for labeling "invisible" minerals in a sample, well, that's always a risk in our hobby, with many collectors scrambling to have their own example of the latest rare or unexpected species. As the potential viewer of such a sample in a show display case, or perhaps a potential purchaser of such a specimen at a dealer, all I can say is caveat emptor! As for here, I would hope that on mindat, if such items filter into our localities and photo descriptions, that our many resident experts will continue to ask for defensible evidence of such IDs, and to challenge any questionable or indefensible labelings.