STUDIES:
They do studies on blacks most likely to figure out why negroes are such STD factories.
Tuskegee syphilis experiment - Wikipedia
Negroes are also otherwise useless, making them perfect for human experimentation. So there's your answer for that.
CONFERENCE:
Who knows why they have a "melanin conference" every year. I've never heard of a "melanin conference" outside of this forum and the most I found about it using a quick google search is a question on quora and a post in google groups. We have
biweekly meetings where I work where they don't discuss anything of importance so I fail to see how an
annual meeting suggests any kind of desperation, especially when most people have never heard about it.
PRICE:
I already told you why melanin is priced the way it is: scarcity, probably because they haven't bothered to isolate much given the lack of buyers. I've never heard of anyone in my entire life interested in buying melanin. I personally wouldn't know what to do with it except sell it. Decorative diamonds are priced far higher than melanin:
How Much Does a 1 Carat Diamond Cost? | Ritani
The short answer: A 1.00 carat diamond can range in price from about $1,000 to over $12,000.
Even using the smallest estimate ($1,000 per carat), that's still $1,000 per 0.2 grams, or $5,000 per gram, or about 14 times more expensive than melanin. The uses for decorative diamonds? Decorations. They're worthless trinkets that make women crazy because of a few De Beers commercials.
Zinc and other commonly used materials are priced lower because they are isolated in sufficient quantities given that there are actual uses and buyers (in quantity) for the material, unlike melanin.