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Talk:Radiometric dating (view source)
Revision as of 02:00, January 17, 2009
, 02:00, January 17, 2009→Estimates and disagreements: Promised detailed response to Kallium
::: More tomorrow...
::: More tomorrow...
::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 09:56, 16 January 2009 (EST)
::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 09:56, 16 January 2009 (EST)
::: "''the statement that "laboratories are known to improve the likelihood of of getting a "correct" date by asking for the expected date of the item" does not follow from the document that was cited to support it.''": The document was cited to support that laboratories have been known to ask for the approximate date. You are reading more into it than was intended.
::: Your justification for laboratories requesting that information was unclear. On the one hand you seemed to be saying that they need that information to understand the context, but as TerryH has pointed out, the context ''should be'' irrelevant, and if TerryH misunderstood your point, I don't blame him. On the other hand, and your second post seems to favour this view, you seem to be likening this to a hypothesis-prediction-fulfilment situation, where the case for the hypothesis is strengthened by the hypothesis making successful predictions. Perhaps this is so, and perhaps the researcher really should make such predictions, but to his supervisor or other such body, not to the dating laboratory.
::: Do you understand the principle of double-blind tests? Double-blind tests are done because it is a known problem that the answer the researcher expects can influence the outcome. So giving the dating laboratory an expected/anticipated age could well affect the outcome, even if unintentionally. If you supplied a dating laboratory with a piece of wood and told them that it was from a building that was supposed to be an early settler's house, and the dating laboratory came up with a date of 30,000 years, do you think that they would simply report that date to you? I've heard a scientist say that he noticed that fairly often a dating laboratory he sent samples off to would ask for another sample, as the ones supplied were no good. He eventually asked them in what way they were no good, and was told, "wrong date"! The point is, if you tell the dating laboratory what age it ''should'' be, and it's widely different, they are likely to run the test again, ask for another sample, or whatever, until they get something that is about "right". This means that it is not a totally objective test, but one that is influenced by expectations.
::: Nobody is alleging deliberate dishonesty.
::: It's true that there are disagreements in other areas of science. But all such disagreements are over claims that cannot be readily tested and measured. You won't find disagreement over the boiling point of water, for example, because it can be readily measured. The point of highlighting the disagreement is to make clear that a date is ''not'' an easily-measured quantity, but something that is so subject to variables that different researchers readily reject others' dates when it suits them, and to point out that the claim that dating methods are shown to be reliable because different methods agree is a [[furphy]].
::: As for the disagreement over a "detail", they may not be ''specifically'' arguing over the validity of the techniques ''per se'', but they ''are'' arguing over the validity of the dates derived via those techniques, which implies that they are ''effectively'' arguing over the validity of the techniques. How can you have a valid technique giving an invalid date?
::: "''Show me written documents describing trilobites dying.''": Genesis 6-8 describes a world-destroying flood that would have buried alive a great many trilobites. And yes, that is the point. These dating techniques are used to discredit a written (recorded) history of the world.
::: "''Radiometric dating ironically is the next best thing to time travel in terms of determining dates, only because there's isn't a better technique in between.''": Other than eye-witness accounts, such as found in the Bible. The best method would be time travel. The second best would be eye-witness accounts. The third best would be radiometric dating techniques. But the third-best is used to discredit what is claimed to be the the second best. See the problem?
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