Roxrkool: Age-dating is not within my area of expertise, but I am confused as to how compiling a list of ONLY discordant dates is going to give you anything BUT discord. It doesn't really seem to say anything other than, "age-dating can result in discordant dates." Well, we already know that! It seems to me all you've done is calculated some sort of biased standard deviation using questionable data. Questionable because I can't see the actual data and how it was collected.
Reply: You must keep in mind that the confirmation of frequent and extreme discordances with geochronological predictions does not, in itself, invalidate radiometric dating. If geochronological reliability criteria are consistently applied to the results, and frequently provide convincing evidence to reject discordant ages and accept concordant ages, then the method of radiometric dating would be strengthened. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Geochronologists have at their disposal an endless pool of rationalizations that can be applied to virtually any situation to explain away discordant ages; none of which are applied consistently.
Roxrkool: As JonF stated, before anyone can critically review your proposal, you're going to have to show exactly how and from where the numbers you used were collected. So you are probably going to have to write up that long summary.
Reply: You make a good point. Perhaps I should provide a different form of argument; instead focusing on one or a few studies instead of citations from dozens. I plan on making such a post in the near future. For now, however, I will ride this one out.
Loudmouth: I have 2 major problems with Woodmorappe’s "bad dates.
Reply: Before addressing your criticisms of Woodmorappe, let me first repeat what I said on another thread:
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
An example.
Fixed broken link. --Admin
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:
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.
Now on to your example.
Loudmouth: Aha, Woodmorappe, by claiming that they threw out an isochron is in fact fudging the data. No isochron ever formed because the data points did not form a straight line. This date was mentioned in the original study because it was an example of the isochron method detecting a contaminated or unclosed system.
Reply: But you must look a little closer. How, exactly, did the geochronologist know that there was an open system? Was it by independent examination of samples for weathering or contamination? No. The invocation of contamination and closed system behavior is a purely ad hoc rationalization that can be called upon at any time the data points contradict the expected age of the samples. If there was truly an independent method of weeding out contaminated samples, discordances would not be computed as often as they are.
Another important point should be made. Geochronologists are quick to dispatch bad isochrons when the scatter does not confirm their presuppositions, but are equally quick to dispatch good isochrons under the same conditions. This is true for
every reliability criterion! The geochronologist selects the dependability standard that gives him the answer he already knows is true, and ignores the rest. A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy at its finest.
And this is precisely why the compilation of discordant ages must be
independent of the application of reliability criteria! We must first understand the characteristics of the raw data before we begin to refine it. Geochronologists and supporters for an ancient earth are exhibiting fallacious logic in saying that many discordant ages are simply not a part of the raw data because they can be explained by fanciful hypothetical geologic events that allegedly occurred in the distant past.
Loudmouth: You are claiming that bad dates occur "frequently". What is frequently?
Reply: Good question. We will never know exactly how frequently bad dates occur. The fact that many discordances are not published makes it effectively impossible to perform an accurate survey. Thus, what I have done is taken a sample of discordances (from Woodmorappe) to gain an understanding of how imprecise ages can be, and then subsequently researched some literature from geochronologists and scientists to get an overall understanding of their frequency. It is clear to me that discordances are frequent and imprecise.
Dr. Cresswell: And, at least 400 such results have been published. Where else did the numbers in the analysis presented come from if not published literature?
Reply: I think you are using faulty logic. It is clear that many discordant ages are not published in the literature. The fact that one man has cited 400 does not falsify that concept, but only exponentiates the total possible number of discordances (both published and unpublished).
Dr. Cresswell: Besides, a relatively simple analysis of the literature would reveal if there was any significant under-reporting of outlying results. Collect as many reported results as possible, it'll take a while going through the literature but neither impossible nor expensive (a moderately capable scientist with access to on-line journals and some spare time could do it), and for each method and time frame (assume initially that different methods and ages will result in different distributions) determine the difference between each measurement and the assume aged of the sample measured. Plot a histogram of these differences and one would expect something not too far from a normal distribution; a significant step down at greater than 3 or 4 standard deviations from the mean would indicate that a lot of outliers are not reported.
Reply: This is an excellent idea. And I pondered, on more than one occasion, in doing so. But again, the concept of unpublished discordances renders such a study incapable of accurately reflecting the true scatter of ages.
Roxrkool: It can tell us about metamorphism, re-heating due to igneous events, etc.
Reply: You must understand that discordant dates cannot tell us about metamorphism, re-heating due to igneous events, etc. unless we use reliability standards consistently. We do not. Instead, we equate discordance with metamorphism, and concordance with closed system, effectively solidifying the conclusions of our experiments before they are even conducted.
Roxrkool: Even better, if creationists wanted to save money they could tag along on a geologic survey.
Reply: Actually, I want to do this myself. I have not, however, looked into it. If someone has a good contact or website for such an excursion, I would more than appreciate it.
Loudmouth: Why don't we see this happening? Because it is easier to fool your audience with smoke and mirrors instead of doing the actual work of substantiating your claims with real evidence. This is why Woodmorappe uses supposed "bad dates", accuses geologists of conspiring to hide the skads of supposed "bad dates", and claims that radiometric dating produces random scatter. He is unwilling to do the work, and probably knows that radiometric dating has none of the flaws he claims it does.
Reply: This is a possibility. There is, however, another possibility.
PaulK: An early (1961) paper on K-Ar dating of glauconite (a difficult mineral to date) reported 5 discordant results Woodmorappe uses. And 40 dates that were within 10% of the expected value. Assuming that there are no other discrepant results
Reply: But considering how geochronology operates, one can never safely make that assumption, as I have already demonstrated.
Crashfrog: At a single weighing, both scales might produce numbers so discordant with my actual weight that we wouldn't be able to distinguish between the scales. But repeated weighings, taking the average, would show that one scale clustered results around a certain value - my actual weight - while the other exhibited no such clustering. Moreover, were I to compare weights with my friend - a man vastly heavier than I - we would see that, in the majority of cases, one scale returned larger weights for him than for I, while the other one had no such pattern.
Reply: Good analogy. Let’s imagine a scale that, on average, tends to give a higher weight to a heavy man compared to a light man. Now assume that we want to weigh accurately the weights of 3 billion men, but we can only view the resulting measurements, not the men themselves. What we end up with is endless scatters of weights, each of which span multiple body plans (e.g., skinny to large), for which the only possible way of confirming the actual weight is to establish a pre-conceived body plan that we assume we are confirming.
This is flawed reasoning, because a vague overall pattern does not help us one bit in assessing the actual weight of a specific person. It simply leaves us with an undefined and unverifiable age correlation.
Crashfrog: But there's absolutely nothing "arbitrary" for the rejection of these dates. There are legitimate, rigorous statistical procedures for the rejection or dismissal of results that are sufficiently divergent from the majority.
Reply: I must disagree with you here. First of all, there cannot exist rigorous statistical procedures if such procedures are not applied consistently. I have noted numerous instances where, for example, consistency in dates were ignored for no more than the very fact that the ages were discordant. Second, geochronologists cannot claim that concordance is in the majority. This is because they have never compiled a comprehensive trend analysis representing all concordant, published discordant, and unpublished discordant dates in the population. I suspect that there are psychological reasons for the absence of such an analysis.
Crashfrog: Since there's a Nobel prize waiting for the guy who does this, what's the hold-up?
Reply: A common statement made by uniformitarians/evolutionists. Such statements simply disregard how normal science operates under an established paradigm.
Crashfrog: The reason that this research has never been performed, and never will be, is because the majority of Creationists, Woodmorappe most likely included, know that their objections are hollow, and that such a survey would confirm the efficacy of radiometric dating, not impugn it.
Reply: This statement conveniently ignores the fact that no geochronologist/evolutionist has performed a comprehensive analysis of concordant/discordant (published/unpublished) ages either.
Crashfrog: Ah. So, since we don't know everything with absolutely perfect knowledge, we know nothing at all? I don't believe that anybody ever said that radiometric dating is easy, or astronomically precise. We are, after all, trying to do very sensitive procedures on objects that have been outside in the elements for as long as billions of years. Nonetheless the level of precision we are able to achieve is more than sufficient to reject YEC timescales out of hand.
Reply: It would be much easier to reject YEC timescales if geochronology was an objectively precise field of study. It does an impressive job, I must say, of masking its imprecision via layer upon layer of unsubstantiated rationalizations.
Crashfrog: Since that's the exact way that measurements are validated in any field, that's precisely what it does. There are relatively few discordant dates compared to the dates that line up with each other. Your objections simply run counter to the way scientific measuring is done.
Purple: The only way it is going to take an inordinately long time to find the underlying correlations is if you have to sift through the massive pile of "good" data to find the one or two examples of "bad" data that even then, cannot prove the YEC position. The data is out there. Why not go get it yourself to find out how well it all correlates?
Reply: My experience with the literature shows otherwise. The final results may show relatively few discordant dates compared to the dates that line up with each other, but only after a thorough distillation process of rationalizations.
Roxrkool: This is enough for me to never view Woodmorappe as a professional scientist ever again. Where are his ethics?
Reply: Note the wording of the geochronologist: Continuous partial argon loss may have occurred as a result of weathering or heating from deep burial, although neither phenomenon is apparent from field or petrographic studies. This effectively nullifies any independent contamination evidence. Again, if geochronologists could objectively identify which samples were contaminated, they would be able to identify them prior to their experiment, instead of relying on ad hoc explanations.
Roxrkool: And an excellent example of why any calculations based on Woodmorappe data are dubious at best.
Reply: Ironically, I would say that the very fact that a geochronologist can consider analytical precision and consistency as fortuitious by citing a fanciful hypothetical event that allegedly occurred in the distant past with NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE adequately falsifies the concept of consistency as a reliability criterion.
Buzsaw: Hi Anti C. I wish I were apprised enough on this stuff to jump in and help out, but it's outa my field.
Reply: You should attempt to make it your field. I felt the same way only a few years ago, but if you enjoy researching historical sciences, then you should spend some time each night and plug along. After a while, you can begin debating your positions. But you must be willing to concede points to the other side when they are obvious. Understanding that there will be some evidence for both sides is the way to start. We just need to figure out a reasonable conclusion.
I can offer you a listing of some good resources to start with.
To all: I do not want this post to metamorphosize into a he said, she said thread. I will attempt, at my earliest convenience, to focus on one (or a few) studies and provide a posting summarizing my findings. Such a strategy will effectively nullify any criticisms of quote-mining or invalid sample sizes.
In any case, thank you all for your opinions. I hope that I am contributing something new to this debate.
This message has been edited by Admin, 12-09-2004 12:24 PM
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.
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