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Author Topic:   Radiometric Dating and the Geologic Column: A Critique
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 31 of 113 (166546)
12-09-2004 12:48 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Anti-Climacus
12-08-2004 11:53 PM


Suggestion: shorter posts.
I'll just respond to your claim that Woodmorappe has been misreprented by Henke at Hiding the Numbers to Defame Radiometric Dating:
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?
But Woodmorappe didn't say it was a 2 mya discordance, did he (neither did Henke - he said 1%, and simple math yields a difference (including +/- error ranges provided in the excerpt) ranging from 0.2 to 1.1 million years)? No, he said:
[text=black]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.[/text]
And he presents this without giving the amount of discordance shortly after describing a 250 mya discordance precisely to give the impression that the magnitude of error is large, when it's only around 1%. Seems like Henke has fairly accurately characterized Woodmorappe's misrepresentation.
The name of the subsection might have been detection of open-system behavior, but as your quote of the discussion of the 250 mya discordance reveals, Woodmorappe is not limiting himself to that topic in this subsection. Here's your quote of Woodmorappe again for your convenience:
Woodmorappe writes:
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.
Thanks for providing this quote, because it makes it clear that Woodmorappe is trying to communicate precisely the misrepresentation he's accused of by Henke, subsection title notwithstanding.
An observation: this discussion will advance little if we spend all our time on cross-accusations of impropriety. Though you say you'll ride this one out, I think it would be more productive to focus on a case for which the paper in question is available on the Internet. To do otherwise is to debate in the presence of too much incomplete and questionable information.
--Percy

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Replies to this message:
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Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 32 of 113 (166550)
12-09-2004 12:59 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by Percy
12-09-2004 12:48 PM


quote:
I think it would be more productive to focus on a case for which the paper in question is available on the Internet.
I second this suggestion. AC, in your replies to my posts, only focus on how we can determine the frequency of discordance (is it "impossible to know" or "clear" that it occurs frequently). Next, pick what you think is the most damning case of discordance that is well illustrated on the internet. I find it hard not to list examples of well supported concordance, but I can see how that would lead this topic astray. I think we can all wait for you to pick an example and we can work from there.

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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3912 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 33 of 113 (166559)
12-09-2004 1:34 PM


Poetic?
I thought of this in my car...
We can conclude that radiometric dating is invalid because geochronologists hand pick their results. We based this upon a set of hand picked results.
Why do we only have a small amount of results? Because geochronoligists hand pick their results!
Sound familiar anyone?

Replies to this message:
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Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 34 of 113 (166580)
12-09-2004 3:16 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by Jazzns
12-09-2004 1:34 PM


Re: Poetic?
quote:
We can conclude that radiometric dating is invalid because geochronologists hand pick their results. We based this upon a set of hand picked results.
Why do we only have a small amount of results? Because geochronoligists hand pick their results!
Sound familiar anyone?
Willowtree?
Anyway, you are right that Woodmorappe is hypocritical in his arguments. He claims that geochronologists are being deceptive by relying exclusively on hand picked results. What does Woodmorappe do? He collects a data set of 450 hand picked results. Is not Woody guilty of the same thing that he is accusing geochronologists of? It would seem so.

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Replies to this message:
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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3912 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 35 of 113 (166585)
12-09-2004 3:28 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by Loudmouth
12-09-2004 3:16 PM


Re: Poetic?
Moreover it is circular reasoning. "If geochronologists weren't so deceptive then we would have more proof of their deception."
I really do think the only answer to put this issue to rest is to have Creationists do that double blind study that everyone keeps mentioning instead of their pre-planned/we already know this is going to fail "experiments".
Why won't they? Canned response, radiometric dating is an invalid method of scientific inquiry. The assumption proves the conclusion. Case closed.
Does anyone know how to pronounce Woodmorappe anyway? I have been saying it in my head as (wood-more-app).

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Replies to this message:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 36 of 113 (166590)
12-09-2004 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by Jazzns
12-09-2004 3:28 PM


Re: Poetic?
Does anyone know how to pronounce Woodmorappe anyway?
I've heard "what? more crap?" but surely that can't be it. Probably "Peczis," his real name. The one he's been known to cite as a reference.

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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3912 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 37 of 113 (166594)
12-09-2004 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Coragyps
12-09-2004 3:46 PM


What is in a name?
Peczis, his real name.
Oh good! I am so glad we are taking the word of a man so willing to put his name on the line for what he believes in.
Maybe he has a good reason to publish under a different name?

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Replies to this message:
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Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 38 of 113 (166595)
12-09-2004 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by Jazzns
12-09-2004 3:28 PM


Re: Poetic?
quote:
Does anyone know how to pronounce Woodmorappe anyway? I have been saying it in my head as (wood-more-app).
That's how I pronounce it. It's a pseudonym, so it really doesn't matter anyway.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 39 of 113 (166601)
12-09-2004 4:25 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Coragyps
12-09-2004 3:46 PM


The one he's been known to cite as a reference.
Funny. Pathetic, but funny.

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 40 of 113 (166609)
12-09-2004 4:45 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Anti-Climacus
12-08-2004 11:20 AM


The compilation of ages, in and of themselves, provide the evidence sufficient to prove my point: imprecision and contradictory results.
Sorry, that's just flat-out wrong. Your claim is "radiometric dating will frequently yield ages which are grossly discordant compared with the predictions of geochronology and that such discordances will frequently exhibit poor precision." {emphasis added}. No mere compilation of ages can prove those claims. "Frequently" requires comparison to some other appropriate and justified number. Is 432 of something frequent? You can't tell until you compare it to something else. 432 major snowstorms per year is frequent; 432 snowflakes falling per year is not frequent.
Of course, given Woodmorappe's well-known and documented mendacity and misrepresentations, the number of truly problematic studies in his sample is certainly less than 432. But I don't know what the right number is so, for the sake of argument only, let's take 432 as the number.
Then all you have proven so far is that there are some problematic studies. Neither you nor Woodmoorappe have even tried to do the necessary statistics ... partly because the sampling is hopelessly flawed (it's not representative of the population) and, I suspect, partly because both of you know what the result would be and you don't want to acknowledge that result.
OK, some studies are problematic. Until you can relate that to the properties of the population of all studies, using rigorous and well-understood statistical methods, you haven't even indicated an overall problem, much less a young Earth.

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 41 of 113 (166613)
12-09-2004 4:57 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by roxrkool
12-08-2004 12:14 PM


discordant dates are often listed in papers because event those dates tell us (mainstream geoscientists) something about the geologic history of an area
There's also another significant source of such dates; tests of possibly inappropriate materials to verify whether or not they are inappropiate, especially those studies which conlude that the material is inappropriate. Such tests are the source of the old "fresh clams dated by radiocarbon tested as old" canard (the study was verifiying that marine organisms couldn't be tested meaningfully), the old "Volcanic rocks produced by lava flows which occurred in Hawaii in the years 1800-1801 were dated by the potassium-argon method. Excess argon produced apparent ages ranging from 160 million to 2.96 billion years." lie (the study was lookin specifically at dating xenoliths in the lava).

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 42 of 113 (166627)
12-09-2004 5:22 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Loudmouth
12-08-2004 12:06 PM


Re: 2 Critiques
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
I happen to have a scanned copy of Dalrymple (1984) with me (I'm asking permission to distribute the entire thing. Here's the figure to which the Dalrymple text refers:
It's pretty obvious that only a moron would try to draw one straight line through those data points!
Let's also post the text from Dalrymple about Woodmorappe1 just before the part you posted:
Expected age (million years) Age obtained (million years)Formation/locality
5239Winona Sand/gulf coast
6038Not given/gulf coast
140163,186Coast Range batholith/Alaska
185186-1230Diabase dikes/Liberia
-34,000*Pahrump Group diabase/California
*This example was not tabulated by Woodmorappe (134) but was discussed in his text.

Table 2: Examples of Supposedly Discrepant Radiometric Ages, as Tabulated and Discussed by Woodmorappe (134)
Removed extra line breaks from table. --Admin
The two ages from gulf coast localities (Table 2) are from a report by Evernden and others (43). These are K-Ar data obtained on glauconite, a potas-sium-bearing clay mineral that forms in some marine sediment. Wood-morappe (134) fails to mention, however, that these data were obtained as part of a controlled experiment to test, on samples of known age, the applica-bility of the K-Ar method to glauconite and to illite, another clay mineral. He also neglects to mention that most of the 89 K-Ar ages reported in their study agree very well with the expected ages. Evernden and others (43) found that these clay minerals are extremely susceptible to argon loss when heated even slightly, such as occurs when sedimentary rocks are deeply buried. As a re-sult, glauconite is used for dating only with extreme caution. Woodmorappes gulf coast examples are, in fact, examples from a carefully designed experi-ment to test the validity of a new technique on an untried material.
The ages from the Coast Range batholith in Alaska (Table 2) are referenced by Woodmorappe (134) to a report by Lanphere and others (80). Whereas Lanphere and his colleagues referred to these two K-Ar ages of 163 and 186 million years, the ages are actually from another report and were obtained from samples collected at two localities in Canada, not Alaska. There is nothing wrong with these ages; they are consistent with the known geologic relations and represent the crystallization ages of the Canadian samples. Where Woodmorappe obtained his 140-million-year expected age is anyones guess because it does not appear in the report he cites.
The Liberian example (Table 2) is from a report by Dalrymple and others (34). These authors studied dikes of basalt that intruded Precambrian crystal-line basement rocks and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks in western Liberia. The dikes cutting the Precambrian basement gave K-Ar ages ranging from 186 to 1213 million years (Woodmorappe erroneously lists this higher age as 1230 million years), whereas those cutting the Mesozoic sedimentary rocks gave K-Ar ages of from 173 to 192 million years. 40Ar/39Ar experiments4 on samples of the dikes showed that the dikes cutting the Precambrian basement contained excess 40Ar and that the calculated ages of the dikes do not represent crystal-lization ages. The 40Ar/39Ar experiments on the dikes that intrude the Meso-zoic sedimentary rocks, however, showed that the ages on these dikes were reliable. Woodmorappe (134) does not mention that the experiments in this study were designed such that the anomalous results were evident, the cause of the anomalous results was discovered, and the crystallization ages of the Liberian dikes were unambiguously determined. The Liberian study is, in fact, an excellent example of how geochronologists design experiments so that the results can be checked and verified.
1Woodmorappe, J. 1979. Radiometric geochronology reappraised. Creation Res. Soc. Quart. 16: 102-129, 147.
{Upated image link)
This message has been edited by Admin, 12-09-2004 06:53 PM
This message has been edited by JonF, 03-07-2005 11:24 AM
Edited by JonF, : Update image URL

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 43 of 113 (166631)
12-09-2004 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Loudmouth
12-09-2004 11:54 AM


Firstly, if we removed radiometric dating there is still more than enough evidence to conclude that the earth is ancient. There is zero evidence that the earth is less than a 100,000 years old, much less 6,000 years.
Just for grins, a table of many such estimates extracted from Dalrymple's 1991 book is at Pre-1900 Non-Religious Estimates of the Age of the Earth.pdf.

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 44 of 113 (166634)
12-09-2004 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Anti-Climacus
12-08-2004 11:53 PM


It is clear to me that discordances are frequent and imprecise.
Only because you made up your mind before examining the evidence, and you (and Woodmorappe) have done an exceptionally poor job of examining the evidence.
Until and unless you compare your sample to the the population using standard and established statistical methods, all you have established is that some problematic dates exist.
PurpleYouko pointed out how easy it is to collect appropriate data in Message 19. Of course, collecting and analyzing realistic data wouldn't give you the result you want ...

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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 45 of 113 (166636)
12-09-2004 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Jazzns
12-09-2004 4:03 PM


Re: What is in a name?
Maybe he has a good reason to publish under a different name?
Maybe he does. His use of a pseudonym has no relationship to the validity or in-validity of his arguments.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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