Seriously, though, what are we going to do about privately held specimens?

The problem is that this specimen was privately owned at the time we saw it, and so far as we know it still is. So according to all standard procedures, we should consider it unavailable to science until such time as it is deposited in an accredited museum. (I was pretty sure the SVP has an explicit policy to this effect, but I couldn’t find it on the site. Can anyone?)

So what should we do? All the possible courses of action seem unfortunate.

1. We could go ahead and include photos, drawings and descriptions of these vertebrae in the paper — but that would violate community norms by building an argument on observations that cannot be in general be replicated by other researchers. (For all we know, these vertebrae are now decorating Nicolas Cage’s pool room.)

2. We could omit these vertebrae from the paper, but use the information we gained from examining them in formulating our diagnostic criteria for Barosaurus cervicals — but this would also not really be replicable, plus it would have that horrible “we know something that you don’t” quality.

3. We could act as though these vertebrae do not exist, or as though we had never seen them, writing the paper based only on our observations of inferior material and of the good AMNH 6341 that is not accessible for study or photography — but that would make our characterisation of Barosaurus cervical morphology less helpful than it could be.

4. We could refrain from publishing on Barosaurus cervicals at all until such time as these vertebrae, or similarly well-preserved ones, are available to study at accredited institutions — but that would simply deprive the world of an interesting and exciting study.

Is there a fifth path that we have not seen? And if not, which of these four is the least objectionable?