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Author Topic:   The real "unexpected dates" thread
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 1 of 2 (24105)
11-24-2002 5:35 PM


I was digging around on drdino.com - primarily to see if he was keeping his fans up to date on his upcoming assault trial - and stopped to read his FAQ page on C14 and K-Ar dating. I knew that the guy was, shall we say, imprecise in his use of scientific sources, but I was amazed at what I found.
quote:
. A freshly created earth would require about 30,000 years for the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere to reach this point of equilibrium because it would leak out as it is being filled. Tests indicate that the earth has still not reached equilibrium. There is more C-14 in the atmosphere now than there was 40 years ago. This would prove the earth is not yet 30,000 years old!
Has this clown never heard of nuclear weapons? Does he not know that hundreds of them were tested in the atmosphere through the 1950's, generating enough carbon-14 that all C-14 dates are set, by convention, to "years before 1950?" Does he think his public is really that ignorant? (Oh wait, I know the answer to that one....)
Later in the article we have:
quote:
A few examples of wild dates by radiometric dating:
Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old. Science vol. 224, 1984, pp. 58-61
Living mollusk shells were dated up to 2300 years old. Science vol. 141, 1963, pp.634-637
I dug up these two papers on the Science website (subscription required) to see if they had been accurately cited. And golly, what did I find? The first, by A C Riggs, is titled "Major Carbon-14 Deficiency in Modern Snail Shells from Southern Nevada Springs." The second, by M L Keith and G M Anderson, is "Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results with Mollusk Shells."
Now, first, the person who found those references for Hovind would have, one would think, at least have glanced at the titles, or possibly even the abstracts, to see what the articles were about. If they had only looked at the tables, they might have noticed that the "dates", which they had to mine from the text in the Riggs paper, were fully explained by the circumstances of growth in each case: a large part of the carbon these shells were made of was from "old" sources: ancient groundwater in Nevada, and humus in the creekbeds in the Keith & Anderson paper. The main point, in fact, of each paper was to point out to other researchers that they should be aware of this circumstance, as it would invariably lead to "fictitious" dates! Yet Hovind's article pretends that this is just "busimess as usual" in the C-14 biz, and presumably that the people who actually do C-14 work are either fools or frauds. Pot/kettle/black, d'ya think?
On a related note, the "urban legend" of the guy sending a Barbie doll head to the Smithsonian for C-14 dating is kind of interesting. If you actually bothered to date a Barbie (assuming you weren't Ken, of course), you very likely would peg her at 50,000 years old or more - after all, she's made from ancient petroleum products. Of course, though, if Mattell uses something like cornstarch for a filler in her little plastic head, or uses vegetable oil as a plasticizer, it would push those dates nearer to the present. A good project for me as soon as I hit the lottery....
Oh, and I didn't find the legal update either.
[This message has been edited by Coragyps, 11-24-2002]

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by TrueCreation, posted 11-24-2002 6:58 PM Coragyps has not replied

  
TrueCreation
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 2 (24112)
11-24-2002 6:58 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Coragyps
11-24-2002 5:35 PM


"I knew that the guy was, shall we say, imprecise in his use of scientific sources, but I was amazed at what I found."
--You did!? Wow, you must be the first The guy and his methodology is just a big joke, I am embarrassed to share YECism with him.
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Coragyps, posted 11-24-2002 5:35 PM Coragyps has not replied

  
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