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Author Topic:   Peanut Gallery for the Keys/RAZD Debate
kbertsche
Member (Idle past 2159 days)
Posts: 1427
From: San Jose, CA, USA
Joined: 05-10-2007


Message 41 of 57 (407596)
06-27-2007 12:00 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by RAZD
06-25-2007 1:08 PM


Re: Countable Rings
Information is already covered a couple of times: he just keeps repeating his mistaken impressions. Keeps saying stuff is not given when it is. Keeps mixing up occasional missing rings (as a known source of error in dendrochronology) with the rings missing at the beginning of the Prometheus growth.
As Percy notes this kind of denial of reality is frustrating in it's completeness: anything that contradicts his fantasy does not occur in his dream world. He will also flip and flop on position without any concern that what he says contradicts what he said earlier. He is shameless.
I think part of the problem is an inability to deal with uncertainties (a common problem for non-scientists). The fact that there may occassionally be missing or multiple rings is interpreted that ring-counting tells us nothing at all. There is an inability to deal with probabilities or fuzzy data. So in his own mind, the critic completely dismisses tree ring evidence, simply because it MIGHT be wrong. (For some, this may be an honest inability to deal with uncertainty; for others, it may just be an excuse.)
Maybe trying to communicate the concept of "error bars" or probability distributions would help. (As I recall, Bristlecone Pine and Irish Oak were chosen for dendochronology specifically because they have pronounced annual rings and almost never have multiple rings in a year. I don't know the error bars, but I'm sure they are quite small.) Even though ring-counting MAY be off by a few years, there is essentially no chance that it can be off by hundreds of years.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by RAZD, posted 06-25-2007 1:08 PM RAZD has not replied

  
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