I noticed this thread as I was surfing. I would like to toss out a brief response prior to my posting of the thread to come.
Crashfrog: As a suggestion, I would recommend to Anti-Climacus that he excise the quotes that constitute so much of the bulk of his posts; the data he quotes should be sufficient to prove his point. Scientists taken out of context are irrelevant to his argument.
Reply: Is this what I have to look forward to at the EVC forum? Unsubstantiated accusations? Until someone can demonstrate that a high number of my cited references are taken out of context, this claim is unwarranted.
Harlequin: Yes, he should get rid of the quote mining since I don't believe for one second that he has actually examined them in the original. People should rely on primary sources and not what someone said of them whenever possible.
Reply: Unless, of course, the secondary source is a modern evolutionary theorist. In that case, I’m sure, no further verification is required. And I am also sure that when DarwinDefender fundamentalists like Gould and Dawkins or internet sites like the Holy Talk Origins make citations to supporting literature, you’re off and running to confirm their claims by reviewing every scientific journal article referenced.
In any case, I select a sample size from secondary sources that I compile and trace them to primary sources. A test that, I suspect, many others on this forum do not frequently perform. This is true for my geochronology research as it is for paleontology research (for which I have read through 2 comprehensive resources: Robert L. Carroll’s Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution and Barbara Stahl’s Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution) — two state-of-the-art resources that most evolutionists I know have not even read, yet relentlessly charge
me for . . . not reading.
Harlequin: I strongly suspect that many of his quotes came from John Woodmorappe who is not a credible source given his repeated use of flagrant out-of-context quotations. Many quotes are out-of-date.
Reply: I have read the critiques of Woodmorappe’s works, as well as the on-line articles that criticize him for taking citations out of context. Ironic, it seems, that the very critics who charge him of invalid quote mining must take his statements out of context to make their case.
For example, I will arbitrarily take the first criticism from
Henke.
quote:
Woodmorappe (1999) presents numerous examples of what he claims are "discrepant" radiometric dates that contradict each other, fossil data, field structures and/or stratigraphic evidence. For example, Woodmorappe (1999, p. 41) quotes the following statement from Swisher et al. (1993, p. 1994) to "demonstrate" that dates from Evernden et al. (1964), which were once highly regarded and characterized as state-of-the-art, are now considered unreliable: The same unit was most likely the one dated by Evernden et al. (1964) at 66.4 Ma [Ma ]. These ages are most likely too old, owing to the inclusion of detrital grains in the mineral separates.
Yet, how anomalously old are Evernden et al.'s results? We find the answer in the proceeding sentences, which Woodmorappe (1999, p. 41) chooses to ignore. Here's a more complete quotation from Swisher et al. (1993, p. 1993-1994): Obradovich and Cobban (1975) and Obradovich (1984) dated biocide from dacitic pumice located approximately 22 [meters] above the K-P [Cretaceous-Tertiary (Paleocene)] boundary at 65.9 Ma by K-Ar and 65.8 +/- 0.3 Ma (2 sigma) by 40Ar/39Ar methods. The same unit was most likely the one dated by Evernden et al. (1964) at 66.4 Ma. These ages are most likely too old, owing to the inclusion of detrital grains in the mineral separates.
Swisher et al. (1993, p. 1993-1994) are arguing over trivial errors of about 1% and Woodmorappe (1999, p. 41, 52) is misleading us into believing that these errors are huge and fatal to radiometric dating!
But when one reads Woodmorappe’s book, one notices that it is segregated into 100 separate sub-topics, for which each section within a given subtopic attempts to address a specific issue. Henke gives the impression that Woodmorappe was trying to establish gross discrepancies, and was misleading the reader. So, what is the title of the actual subsection from which the apparent invalid reference was used to support?
quote:
Myth: Further, scientists are routinely able to detect open-system behavior and to correct or ignore data from open systems.
Oh? So Woodmorappe was only attempting to refute the detection of open-system behavior
regardless of the spread of dates. And this is precisely why he cited the reference from Evernden et al. In fact, Woodmorappe, on page 40 (the page immediately preceding the one cited by Henke), stated the following:
quote:
Apart from everything else that has been discussed in this section of the paper, the fallacy of the claims advanced by Leveson and Seidemann is proven by the many cases of dates which are recognized as reliable, only to be later discarded in favor of some other presumably-reliable dates which contradict the first set of erstwhile-reliable dates. Many such examples are given in this paper. Let me give another: Some U-Pb zircon dates from the Adirondack Mountain region of New York (McLelland et al 1997, p.A-466), based on bulk-zircon dating, yielded values up to 1416 million years old. These had been accepted as reliable — that is, until single-grain dates yielded results some 250 million years younger. All of a sudden, the earlier ostensibly-reliable dates had to be rejected.
Why would Woodmorappe go out of his way to take a 2 mya discordance out of context when he already cited a 200 mya discordance
in the same subsection?
Could it be, perhaps, that he was only attempting to refute the detection of open-system behavior
regardless of the spread of dates.
Ironically, Henke never addressed the 200 mya spread at his website. He was apparently too busy taking quotes out of context.
Harlequin: The article specifically states that no radiogenic argon within experimental error when only looked at the lava itself and not the inclusions. In other words, what was molten in 200 year old rocks dated to the present day.
Reply: I was simply listing anomalous ages regardless of the reliability criteria used to reject discordances. I address the apparent reliability criteria in another subsection of my article. Ironically, in many cases, xenoliths (used to identify argon contamination) are frequently not noticeable.
Loudmouth: The quotes listed are not well documented quote mines from Woodmorappe, but his legacy of quote mines is quite extensive.
Reply: Your holy Talk Origins reference was replied to by Woodmorappe himself
here.
Loudmouth: Take out the quotes and we can discuss the rest. Or, leave in the quotes and have Woody's dishonesty shown to all. I think the listing of discrepancies is worthy of a topic itself.
Reply: A comment of notable interest.
How many of the contributors to this forum have actually read Woodmorappe’s works? I doubt there is even
one. I suspect that you gentlemen would rather read critiques written by those who agree with your views than actually read the initial literature yourself for a proper comparison. You would find that it is not Woodmorappe who is taking quotes out of context but instead his critics. I cannot argue with the kind of self-contradictory logic that leaves my soon-to-be opponents throwing stones from a glass house.
This message has been edited by Anti-Climacus, 12-08-2004 12:22 AM
This, that a man’s eye cannot see by the light by which the majority see could be because he is used to darkness; but it could also be because he is used to a still clearer light, and when this is so, it is no laughing matter.
. Ar-Ar has not replaced K-Ar, there's still quite a bit of K-Ar being done. It's low-cost, well understood, and is quite accurate on appropriate samples with appropriate cross-checks. I hear from an isotope geochemist over at iidb that Ar-Ar is running into difficulties with post 9/11 federal regulations on handling irradiated material, so Ar-Ar usage may actually go down.
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