Minute of Review 9

The chair recorded that the two explanations previously carried by the file were no longer available to the review. Clerical error had been rejected at Review 5 on the consistency of the numbering across four crews, three plate series and two instrument sets. Inheritance from unrelated prior works had been rejected at Review 8 on the marker pattern, spacing and reference datum, which are Program standard and did not exist before NeuroCrypt.

The chair asked the panel to proceed on the basis that the file now contained no explanation, rather than a weak one.

R-0761 proposed that Review 8's rejection was too strong. Program standard was documented after the excavation began; a contractor working to a draft standard would produce markers matching Program standard in every recorded respect. The plate series should be re-examined on that basis before the review concluded it had nothing.

R-0503, asked whether the datum could have been reconstructed from a draft, stated that the datum in the plates is the datum in current use, that it is not derivable from the site, and that reproducing it would require the finished standard rather than a draft of it. R-0761 accepted the answer and did not press the proposal.

R-1310 proposed that the review seal the incident on the finding that the origin of markers 1 to 113 is not determinable, which R-1310 characterised as a true statement and a sufficient one. The chair observed that it is a statement about the review rather than about the excavation, and that the register does not record what a review was unable to do.

The panel then sat for some time without proposing anything further. The chair recorded the interval rather than adjourning.

The chair recorded the following, and the panel agreed it should stand as the recommendation without amendment:

"The file contains no explanation consistent with all of its own contents. The review is asked to seal the incident. It can only do so by adopting an explanation the record does not support, or by recording an absence as though it were a determination. This office should not become the place where the two are treated as the same thing. The incident should remain open."

R-1310 asked that the dissent be recorded. An incident held open indefinitely is not a live matter but an unattended one, and forty years of open items would in time be indistinguishable from forty years of unread ones. The chair recorded the dissent and noted that the review had no answer to it.

Recommendation accepted. Incident 0001 remains open. No finding entered. The plate series is retained under annex and was not re-examined.

The panel further recommended that the principle be applied generally, and it was subsequently written into the incident-handling practice recorded at NC-GOV-0001 §6. The review did not propose, and was not asked to consider, what should happen to an incident that is still open when everyone who registered it has gone.