Dating Methodology and its Associated Assumptions

Presumably by the same criteria we would use to reject any sort of measurement - convergence or divergence with other, unrelated measurements of the same phenomenon.Let's say you're on a diet that you invented; you're sure it works. You started at 250 pounds. On the 2nd week of your all-butter diet, you weigh yourself on your bathroom spring scale.260 pounds. "Impossible!" you say. Maybe the scale is off? You decide to test it. You weigh yourself on a giant pan balance using enormous, calibrated weights. You find yourself balanced by weights equalling 260 pounds. As well, when you put the 100 pound calibrated weight on the scale, it reads 100 pounds.The clear conclusion? You weight 260 pounds, no matter how much you want to disagree. There's no other explanation for the convergence of the spring scale and the pan balance other than that they both reflect your true weight. (If you were standing in an elevator acelerating upwards, for instance, the spring scale would show a greater weight than the pan balance, because technically the pan balance measures mass, not weight.)This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-25-2004 05:30 PM

Read my post again, especially the first paragraph, where I answered this.If you don't believe it was answered in that post then perhaps I didn't understand your question; you might aid me in rephrasing it in that case.

No, WT, the benchmark is convergence - just like every other thing that has ever been measured.Convergence is the scientific way that all measurements are validated, in any field. You betray considerable inconsistency by labelling this as "unscientific" in one field but not giving it a second thought in any other.

No, it's worse than that. Because his watch is off a little bit, WT has to conclude that there's no such thing as time.

Since evolution is not a dating mechanism, exactly what dates do you think we can derive from it?As has been explained, dating measurements are validated the same way every other kind of measurement is validated - by convergence with other measurements. You accept this without question, or even a second thought, when you're measuring your height and weight, but somehow, this is insufficient for geology.The intellecutal double standard is obvious, and a clear indication of your refusal to approach scientific questions on a truly rational basis.

double post deleted.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-30-2004 12:01 AM

Known by what method? As has been explained over and over again, convergence with other, independant methods. The same way any measurement is validated.

No, WT.We discard every date not consistent with the other dates.If we're just throwing out whatever dates we don't like, WT, how do you think we got the age of the Earth in the first place? We just picked a number out of a hat?Apply your brain for once, WT. You might start by addressing the fact that dates are rejected not by divergence from some arbitrary chosen date, but by divergence from other independant measurements. Of course, we've only said this like a hundred times, but for some reason, you can't seem to tell the difference.

It's not fraud if you know about the rejected dates.And that's rather the fatal flaw in your argument - even when the dating goes ary, scientists still report their results, as well as their reasons for their rejection.So we know how often the dating works, and we know how often we're rejecting dates that don't fit. If the number of dates that we rejected outnumbered the ones we didn't, we'd know that your criticism was spot-on - we were cherry-picking data to match assumptions.But that's not what happens. The dating results are almost always on target; very rarely, and in specific instances, do we get results that we have to reject. This indicates to any thinking person that the dating is completely valid.I mean, pretend that you wiegh yourself with ten differen methods. 9 of them give you results clustered around 175 lbs; the tenth returns a weight of 2 ounces. What does a reasonable person conclude? That they probably weigh 175 lbs or so, and that the tenth result was the result of a measuring error; or, akin to what you would have us believe, the entire endeavor of measuring weight is flawed because there's no such thing as gravity?Don't be an idiot, WT. Dating is accepted because the vast majority of results return values consistent with our models. If we're supposed to believe that, in fact, scientists cherry-pick results, then where are all the rejected results? If you're right, almost every time we have something dated, we should wind up rejecting the results. So where are all these rejected results?

Not in the least true. In addition to the Lake Suigetsu data, there's assorted dating from astronomy and dendrochronology. I think Percy's raised enough doubt about that "incident" that if you want to use it to support your argument, you're going to have to actually substantiate it.

Says Milton, but has he looked there? Or isn't that just an assumption on his part? Actually, "vile unsubstantiated slander" would be more like it - after all, he's accusing literally every geologist of fraud.Doesn't the fact that you're able to dig up these examples of bad dating pretty much prove that there's no sort of scientific "conspiracy" to conceal bad dating?Show me all the dates that scientists are supposed to be rejecting - that is, the reams and reams of data you and Milton say they're tossing out. Surely you wouldn't make that claim without support, would you?

That's one. If you're right, there should be millions.You're a little short. Keep working, though. The fact that there are so few proves us right, not you.

Nobody, ever, has proposed that every single radiodating attempt will always return perfect results. After all, humans have to do it, and humans fuck stuff up. Tests - any tests at all - only give valid results when you do them correctly, and when you're testing something that the test can test.A bathroom scale won't weigh a feather, and a scientific pan-balance will break if you try to stand on it. We use different tools for different scales of measurements, and its no surprise to get bad results when you pick the wrong tool. Not so. If there wasn't validity to the measurements, Percy would be right - there would be hundreds of different competing schools of thought about what were the "right" ages and what were the "wrong" ones. But the fact that all legitimate scientists agree on the age of the Earth proves that there really is something there that they're measuring. The vast, vast majority of dating results are exactly what we expect them to be. If the measurement was invalid, they wouldn't be.It's the correlation that validates them; it would be a lack of correlation that would falsify them. If it turned out that we were throwing out more results than we kept, that would mean the dating was bogus.But it isn't like that at all.

Sure. "We took 10 samples, of 100 different rocks, each rock representing a situation that the evos claimed radiodating would be accurate for, and sent them, anonymously, to 10 different analysis labs."If the results from each lab for each rock are about the same, then the dating must be valid. If ICR and WT are right, then they should get 10 wildly different results for each rock.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 10-23-2004 05:11 PM

That's exactly what his argument is, though. That the results of dating are all over the map, but scientists secretly discard all the dating results except for those that match some arbitrary geologic timeline.I assert that no such discarded, secret results exist; I assert that the wastebins of dating labs are not, in fact, filled with rejected results. I maintain that the opposite is true - the vast, vast majority of dating results are right in line with our expectations, and we very rarely have to reject results because their enormous divergence indicates procedural error.But it would be easy to prove me wrong - have 10 labs test the same samples, collect the data before the Scientific Conspiracy has a chance to throw it out, and show it to us.