Radiometric Dating and the Geologic Column: A Critique

Anti-Climacus writes: Dr. Cresswell writes: ...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. 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 But again, the concept of unpublished discordances renders such a study incapable of accurately reflecting the true scatter of ages.

I don't think your response demonstrated an understanding of what Dr. Crosswell was trying to point out. If I understand correctly, it is the absence of outliers that would be diagnostic of unpublished dates. Due to your response it seems like you think that because of the unpublished dates that this kind of analysis would be impossible yet it is exactly what this type of analysis would show.

Could someone else verify that my interpretation of this is correct. I am not a statitician nor an applied scientist.

Also, I have a major point of contention with one of the primary ideas you keep repeating that geochronoligists hap-hazardly dismiss discordant dates as products of metamorphism, etc. In many of the quotes I have read thus far it seems like the people making them are merely hypothesizing about potential sources for descrepancy rather than espousing sound knowledge that said heating/weathering actually occurred. In how many of these cases have additional studies been done to validate the reason for the descrepancy? Wouldn't an analysis of this have been prudent before outright saying that all geochronologists trivially discard data without care?

It just seems like the claim is based on attempt to prove that radiometric dating IS flawed rather than an attempt to discover IF radiometric dating is flawed. If you want a certain outcome, you can always make the dots fit the line.

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?

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).

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?

*nod*

Point taken.

Another point of notable interest. With all of these geochronological references to *shock metamorphism* and *secondary alteration*, one might question how such events would yield isochrons when such *reliability criteria* are reliant on the preservation of a closed-system. In other words, in the presence of traumatic geologic events, one would not expect an isochron to be produced with a reliable age.

Why wouldn't it produce a reliable age? The age of the trauma.

From what I understand, the isochron formed by a sample that has undergone geologic trauma can often be the age of the trauma. In your example the analysis was of a meteor which had undergone a severe trauma for which the isochron if any was the age of said trauma. Not withstanding that there was probably no "expected age" for a non terrestrial sample to begin with.

The McKee & Noble example where you get your "fortuitous" mantra that you keep repeating speaks of a case where the K-Ar date fit an isochron due to a trauma. It makes perfect sense to me why a heating event would reset the radiometric clock of one type of system and not another. How is this an example of the method failing?

Also, you have failed to address my clarification of Dr Cresswell's statistical strategy to diagnose data fudging by geochronologists. You have a valid method of detecting selective reporting so why don't you exercise it?

This message has been edited by Jazzns, 01-03-2005 12:37 AM

Demands for evidence impossible to obtain are made to preserve a victory by definition (this is evident in the demand for my *proving* the existence of unpublished discordances thru means other than admissions from the scientific literature, which is effectively impossible).

Dr Cresswell gave you a way to diagnose geochronologist fraud. I know you have a lot to read and respond to but why have you ignored this important point!? If you or Woodmorappe really wanted to catch geochronologists with their proverbial pants down then all you would have to do is run the statistics. If everything looks good then you have a situation where either they are right or that the geochronologists are not only throwing out data but carefully inserting data to make the statistics look good.

Yes everyone is asking you for proof of this widespread fraud but someone actually handed you a way to go about finding it!

Please acknowledge that you are reading these posts at least. A simple sentence showing that you know of the existence of mathematical forensics would be fine for starters. Either that or please stop whining about not being able to find evidence of fraud when you haven't even tried.

This message has been edited by Jazzns, 01-03-2005 12:38 AM