Fitch and Miller stuff (split from the Bertsche thread)

[VoxRat]

Febble ... Dr Bertsche confirmed that approximate ages are known prior to testing. I don't know how to make this more clear to you ... As for his later repudiation of my use of his quote, I think you are just going on hear say for the context ... I will check on that tomorrow.

I don't how you can say blind testing doesn't matter when it clearly did in the case of the Leakey fossil whose strata was originally dated at about 230 MY. This is as blatant a case of preconceptions biasing the testing as I can imagine.Another post with scurrilous but vague accusations, with no link or reference.
Wow. Who could have seen that coming?

Could this be a reference to the Koobi Fora (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4K3KC2P-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0d5ce2518d2526c8dd145b9e2a0bc074)* studies? The ones where the only reason you know about the anomalous data is because they were reported by the researchers you accuse of hiding/destroying data?

*(Note the link I gave is from 2006; not the 1970's era studies that creationists have spoonfed to Dave, and which he continues to cite vaguely allude to - as if the puzzle was never solved)

[Dave Hawkins]

Febble ... Dr Bertsche confirmed that approximate ages are known prior to testing. I don't know how to make this more clear to you ... As for his later repudiation of my use of his quote, I think you are just going on hear say for the context ... I will check on that tomorrow.

I don't how you can say blind testing doesn't matter when it clearly did in the case of the Leakey fossil whose strata was originally dated at about 230 MY. This is as blatant a case of preconceptions biasing the testing as I can imagine.Another post with scurrilous but vague accusations, with no link or reference.
Wow. Who could have seen that coming?

Could this be a reference to the Koobi Fora (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4K3KC2P-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0d5ce2518d2526c8dd145b9e2a0bc074)* studies? The ones where the only reason you know about the anomalous data is because they were reported by the researchers you accuse of hiding/destroying data?

*(Note the link I gave is from 2006; not the 1970's era studies that creationists have spoonfed to Dave, and which he continues to cite vaguely allude to - as if the puzzle was never solved)This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.

[Dave Hawkins]

Another post with scurrilous but vague accusations, with no link or reference.
Wow. Who could have seen that coming?

Could this be a reference to the Koobi Fora (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4K3KC2P-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0d5ce2518d2526c8dd145b9e2a0bc074)* studies? The ones where the only reason you know about the anomalous data is because they were reported by the researchers you accuse of hiding/destroying data?

*(Note the link I gave is from 2006; not the 1970's era studies that creationists have spoon fed to Dave, and which he continues to cite vaguely allude to - as if the puzzle was never solved)This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test.
Unsupported assertion. Claims were made about why those results were not accepted as accurate. You need to discuss those claims and why you reject them.

I notice that you keep quoting the erroneous 230 myo date; no such date was ever reported. That's a sure sign that you're just copying AIG/Lubenow without checking your facts. Aren't you supposed to be a skeptic?

IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.
IOW, they had lots of data that was not consilient with the 230 myo date.

But you have not established that the dates were rejected because of the "strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm", nor have you even proposed any argument for that claim. Reasons were given for the rejection of the initially obtained dates, in the original paper and others, that have plenty to do with radiometric dating and geology. If you want to establish your case, you need to explain why you reject those reasons.

Ball's in your court, Davie.That date comes from this article ... F. J. Fitch and J. A. Miller, “Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site,” Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 226–28. Why should I doubt it? My Nature subscription does not yet give access to articles older than 1997, so I can't verify it.

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection? What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.

[VoxRat]

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection? What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. No, Dave.
You're attempting to change the subject.
This thread is all about "blind testing", right?
What does "blind testing" have to do with this case?
Absolutely nothing.
Blind testing might be of value if you want to confirm that the sample reliably dates to 230 MYA. Is that the question? I don't think so.
The rejection - or mindless acceptance - of a result that is inconsistent with everything we know has nothing to do with whether the testing was "blind".
I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. No. You haven't. See above.

Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.We have.
You won't.

[Obd]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test.
Unsupported assertion. Claims were made about why those results were not accepted as accurate. You need to discuss those claims and why you reject them.

I notice that you keep quoting the erroneous 230 myo date; no such date was ever reported. That's a sure sign that you're just copying AIG/Lubenow without checking your facts. Aren't you supposed to be a skeptic?

IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.
IOW, they had lots of data that was not consilient with the 230 myo date.

But you have not established that the dates were rejected because of the "strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm", nor have you even proposed any argument for that claim. Reasons were given for the rejection of the initially obtained dates, in the original paper and others, that have plenty to do with radiometric dating and geology. If you want to establish your case, you need to explain why you reject those reasons.

Ball's in your court, Davie.That date comes from this article ... F. J. Fitch and J. A. Miller, “Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site,” Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 226–28. Why should I doubt it? My Nature subscription does not yet give access to articles older than 1997, so I can't verify it.

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection? What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.

There are these thing called scientific en technological advancement Dave. You could for instance look at the articles that cite the article you mention and you'd find stuff like this:

The first potassium–argon date on feldspars from the KBS tuff gave an age of 2·37&0·3 Ma (Fitch & Miller, 1970), but later application of the method by another laboratory gave 1·8&0·1 Ma (Drake et al., 1980). Only in 1985 was there a final acceptance of an age of 1·88&0·02 Ma (McDougall, 1985).

Several of these advancements allow us to look for that thing you hate so much, consilience:

The other technique which was developed in the 1960s and which has been applied to volcanic materials found at the East African sites is fission-track dating. This is based on the infrequent, but predictable, break up of 238U in a fission reaction.

Another dating technique was also a spin-off of the need to measure nuclear radiation exposure, namely thermoluminescence (TL). In this method the minerals record the total natural radiation field to which they have been exposed since some zeroing event, which is exposure to either heat or sunlight, or formation of crystalline material such as calcite (Aitken, 1985; 1989). The grains trap electrons produced as a result of the beta and gamma radiation produced by 40K, and by the alpha, beta and gamma radiation from the nuclear decay processes in the decay chains of which 238U, 235U and 232Th are the parent nuclei. (It should be noted that there is a much higher probability that a 238U atom will decay in this way, rather than undergo fission.) The measurement procedures involve the detection of low levels of light, when the electrons released by heating the mineral grains recombine at luminescence centres within the crystals to produce luminescence. To obtain an age, such measurements are combined with determinations of the radioactive content, involving particle counting techniques similar to those originally used to measure 14C.

Another technique which relies on the measurement of electrons trapped as a result of natural radioactive decay in the sample and its surroundings is electron spin resonance (ESR). As a dating technique it has proved to be particularly useful for the dating of materials of biological origin (such as teeth or coral), for which the age to be determined is that of formation (Grün, 1989).

The above techniques have been used and further refined during the 1970s and 1980s. Refinement has centred on a greater understanding of the behaviour of the natural systems involved and there have been only relatively small changes in the measurement procedure. The only exception to this was the move in the late 1960s and early 1970s to improve the potassium–argon dating method by using a single mass spectrometer measurement to obtain the age. Instead of measuring 40Ar and 40K on separate aliquots, the grains are put in a nuclear reactor and the neutrons convert a portion of another potassium isotope 39K to 39Ar. The ratio of the argon isotope concentrations is then measured and entered into the age equation directly; this results in greater precision and the argon–argon method has been widely adopted.


link (http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0305440396900102)

I might add that this also explains why people keep criticizing the use of roughly 40 year old research since techniques have been refined and new methods for cross referencing dates have been developed since then.

[Jet Black]

That date comes from this article ... F. J. Fitch and J. A. Miller, “Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site,” Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 226–28. Why should I doubt it? My Nature subscription does not yet give access to articles older than 1997, so I can't verify it.

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection? What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.

the machanisms and issues behind that sort of dating and that particular tuff are totaly different from C14 analysis of holocene varve sequences. It's a red herring iow.

[Jet Black]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.


Hold on, if two dates wildly disagree, then what do you expect people to do?

[VoxRat]

...
Dave, are you sure you know what a blind test achieves? If you claim you do, then PLEASE answer this question:

What would have happened if the testing of the Leakey speciment WAS performed blind? What would CHANGE in the evaluations that followed?

Coherent response, please. Because I have the notion you are entirely oblivious on the circumstances on this issue.On the off-chance that I wasn't crystal clear on this issue, that's exactly what I'm asking, too.

Dave?

[Dave Hawkins]

if this is a serious concern, what kind of error would you expect on a leaf sample? IOW, over a single leaf/twig/insect, how much do you think the carbon date values should change?I don't know. But I have sent a message to one of my contacts to gain insight into this question.

you do realise you are implying thousands of years though?

If you can get to my other questions and responses that would be ace.Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY) And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.

[Dave Hawkins]

That date comes from this article ... F. J. Fitch and J. A. Miller, “Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site,” Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 226–28. Why should I doubt it? My Nature subscription does not yet give access to articles older than 1997, so I can't verify it.

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection? What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.

the machanisms and issues behind that sort of dating and that particular tuff are totaly different from C14 analysis of holocene varve sequences. It's a red herring iow.

Well other than that, I've given Dave some information about the correction of that particular Potassium-Argon date here (http://www.talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=19923&postcount=115). He seems to fail to grasp the concept of improving a method. So even though it's not even relevant, Dave's assertion about some kind of data manipulation in that case is just wrong.Improving a method? Come on. I guess you haven't read my piece HERE (http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=5007060#post5007060).

[Jet Black]

Yes, I realize that.

then why do you immediately start doubting the dating methods and ignore the intricacies of the sampled material?

Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY) And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.

the Bertsche comment on the wood has nothing to do with the dating techniques, there was a problem with the sample itself. You're trying to tell us that (in that case) carbon dating does not work. recall that is a piece of wood exposed to modern contamination. Note also that he found a particular pattern in the error, so again, I question how this relates to your doubts about carbon dating. if that piece was not contaminated you would have got the same age all the way through.

you're trying to tell us that >200 samples for a single core are all crap in a very special way indeed ( a way that you are still not addressing despite me having gone to lengths twice now to get you to try to discuss it)

[VoxRat]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. ...

Hold on, if two dates wildly disagree, then what do you expect people to do?Question the validity and assumptions of the method, which is what I do.No.
"Questioning the validity and assumptions of the method" is what every scientist does all the time, including all the scientists you think you need to school.

And that's exactly why obviously out of whack results are questioned.

But that doesn't mean that all - or most - radiodating results should be dismissed as useless. And there's a huge difference between saying "that can't be right!" and "that doesn't conform to my preconceived notions".

Again - you seem to be ignoring the multiple posts, above, that point out that this whole Koobi Fora issue has absolutely nothing to do with the supposed subject of this thread: blind testing.

Unless you're confusing "blind" with "mindless". That could be the problem.

Oh! and by the way... I sent you that paper in hopes that you would read it a little more deeply than just to confirm that it refers to 230 MYO results. That was never a question.

[Dave Hawkins]

Yes, I realize that.

then why do you immediately start doubting the dating methods and ignore the intricacies of the sampled material?

Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY) And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.

the Bertsche comment on the wood has nothing to do with the dating techniques, there was a problem with the sample itself. You're trying to tell us that (in that case) carbon dating does not work. recall that is a piece of wood exposed to modern contamination. Note also that he found a particular pattern in the error, so again, I question how this relates to your doubts about carbon dating. if that piece was not contaminated you would have got the same age all the way through.

you're trying to tell us that >200 samples for a single core are all crap in a very special way indeed ( a way that you are still not addressing despite me having gone to lengths twice now to get you to try to discuss it)You may be correct that the Jericho wood example may have a valid explanation, but the Koobi Fora example is quite clear. Also, did you not read this earlier post? RADIOMETRIC DATING SELECTIVITY
Woodmorappe has written extensively on the failure of radiometric dating to accurately determine real ages. You will not find anyone who documents his work more carefully than him. His 1979 study (updated in 1999) entitled “Radiometric Dating Reappraised” appearing in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol 16, #2 is one of the most thoroughly documented papers I have seen anywhere. He compiled a list of more than 300 anomalous published radiometric dates [Table 1]. He notes that “the number of determinations actually used to define “correct“ values for the geologic column are fewer than the anomalies comprising Table 1, except for the Cenozoic and Cretaceous. Armstrong316 compiled a listing of dates that are considered to be reliable time-points for the Phanerozoic; the list presumably up to date as of 1976-1977. There are 260 pre-Cenozoic dates compiled, but 98 of the 260 are Cretaceous, and many determinations have only partial biostratigraphic brackets.” [CRSQ 16/2, p. 113] He provides the following quotes from non-YEC sources regarding long age isotope dating ...
Quote:
“Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated . . .”

“It is, of course, all too facile to ‘correct’ various values by explanations of leakage, or initially high concentrates of strontium or argon. These explanations may be correct, but they must first be related to a time line or ‘cline of values’ itself subject to similar adjustments and corrections on a nonstatistical, nonexperimental basis.”
[Waterhouse, J. B. 1978. Chronostratigraphy for the World Permian. Contributions to the Geologic Time Scale (American Association of Petroleum Geologists Studies in Geology No. 6), p. 316.]

“In general, dates in the ‘correct ball park’ are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully explained.”
[Mauger R. L. 1977. K-Ar Ages of Biotites from Tuffs in Eocene Rocks of the Green River, Washakie, and Uinta Basins, Utah,Wyoming, and Colorado. (University of Wyoming) Contributions to Geology 15(1):37.]

“ . . . some of the ages do not correspond with stratigraphic position. The reported ages in millions of years are . . .” [Note the implication that there are many UN-reported dates]
[Twiss, P. G. and R. K. DeFord. 1967. Potassium-Argon Dates from Vieja Group, Rim Rock County, trans-Pews, Texas. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs-1967, p. 380.]
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=4870779#post4870779Discrepant results seem to be the rule, not the exception. And no one (except us creationists) is crying "foul." But they should be. Jet Black, please tell me how this whole enterprise is any different from the Loan Officer/Appraiser sham? Really ... how is this different? Appraisers want to please loan officers and I think labs want to please paying clients. Clients are looking for radiometric confirmation for their work, so there is strong motivation by labs to give them what they want.

[ericmurphy]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.


Hold on, if two dates wildly disagree, then what do you expect people to do?Question the validity and assumptions of the method, which is what I do.

That ship has already sailed, Dave. You do realize, do you not, that radiocarbon dating, due to its utility in the field of archaeology, has been tested, and retested, and retested, and retested, and retested, and retested, and retested, and then retested again. I know you've been to the CalPal site, Dave (or, at least, people have linked the site to you dozens of times). You've seen the calibration curves. Calibrating radiocarbon dating techniques is an ongoing process that's been going on for years.

And the truth of the matter is, you've never given anyone any reason to doubt the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, which is well established (well established how? I'm pretty sure you know). You just keep harping on the idea that if labs know what date they're supposed to produce, they'll toss out any results that don't match those dates. Even if that were the case, you haven't presented us with any evidence that results that don't match those dates even exist.

The only reason you have for doubting the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, Dave, is that it produces dates that contradict your worldview.

[ericmurphy]

I don't know. But I have sent a message to one of my contacts to gain insight into this question.

you do realise you are implying thousands of years though?

If you can get to my other questions and responses that would be ace.Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY) And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.

Dave, the dates for the Koobi fora tuff were accurate. The problem is, they were dating material that was not correlated with the fossils they were looking at. The problem was not with the technique. The problem was with tying the material properly to its surroundings.

The problem with the Jericho wood was contamination. The dates produced were a physical impossibility.

Neither of these results demonstrate that radiometric dates are unreliable, or inaccurate. They demonstrate the limits of experimental technique, which is an entirely different matter.

[Obd]

the machanisms and issues behind that sort of dating and that particular tuff are totaly different from C14 analysis of holocene varve sequences. It's a red herring iow.

Well other than that, I've given Dave some information about the correction of that particular Potassium-Argon date here (http://www.talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=19923&postcount=115). He seems to fail to grasp the concept of improving a method. So even though it's not even relevant, Dave's assertion about some kind of data manipulation in that case is just wrong.Improving a method? Come on. I guess you haven't read my piece HERE (http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=5007060#post5007060).

Yes that's a perfect example of you not being able to grasp those concepts. The encyclopedia article states improvements made and the post I reference above also contains alternatives that can be used to verify radiometric dates. Now what you do next is saying "Well scientist thought the sun revolved around the earth, now it's the other way around, so the notion that the earth revolves around the sun is wrong!!!".

Furthermore you seem to want to use that kind of improvement to claim that we should suddenly seriously consider ages to be decreased by a factor of at least 1000, even though the diagram in your link clearly shows otherwise. So why is it that we're not suddenly finding ages with a 6000 year maximum, but still in the range of millions and billions of years despite all the improvements Dave?

[JonF]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test.
Unsupported assertion. Claims were made about why those results were not accepted as accurate. You need to discuss those claims and why you reject them.

I notice that you keep quoting the erroneous 230 myo date; no such date was ever reported. That's a sure sign that you're just copying AIG/Lubenow without checking your facts. Aren't you supposed to be a skeptic?

IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.
IOW, they had lots of data that was not consilient with the 230 myo date.

But you have not established that the dates were rejected because of the "strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm", nor have you even proposed any argument for that claim. Reasons were given for the rejection of the initially obtained dates, in the original paper and others, that have plenty to do with radiometric dating and geology. If you want to establish your case, you need to explain why you reject those reasons.

Ball's in your court, Davie.That date comes from this article ... F. J. Fitch and J. A. Miller, “Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site,” Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 226–28.
No, it doesn't, Dave. I have pointed this out several times. It comes from AIG.

Why should I doubt it? My Nature subscription does not yet give access to articles older than 1997, so I can't verify it.
I thought you were a skeptic, Davie? That's why you should doubt it. Especially since I (and, I think, others) have pointed it out to you many times. Never crossed your mind that I/we might be right and AIG might be wrong? That's sure some spindly skepticism you got there, Davie.

No date of 230 mya was reported. No date that rounds to 230 mya was reported. No date that could reasonably be described as "about 230 mya" was reported. For your and the lurker's information, the reported dates were 219 ± 7, 223 ± 7, and 221 ± 7. The 230 number comes from taking the upper bound on the highest number and reporting that as a characterization of all the reported results. It's not a mathematically large error, but it is an ethically large error, and it's an obviously deliberate one. It should lead you to distrust and check everything in your source.

Anyhoo, you have the paper now. Other interested parties may PM me.

OK, well how else am I supposed to establish the reason for the rejection?
By studying the real material and disussing it rather than blindly swallowing all the crap you read at AIG.

What do YOU think the reason was? And don't just give me this vague "there were multiple items which were not consilient" mumbo jumbo. Be specific please. I've given you a very conspicuous "elephant in the living room" type of reason why they might have rejected the old dates. Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.
You've ignored it so many times in the past, why should I expect anything different now? But I'll try.

Long story short, the KBS Tuff is a mixture of "young" material deposited as a volcanic tuff, and "old" material carried in by erosion from an older nearby tuff. Dating a mixture of young and old material yields a date that is somewhere between the age of the old material and the young material. Duh. Like Ngauruhoe. To get a good date for the depostion of KBS Tuff itself, you need to separate the two materials. And that separation is exceptionally difficult in this particular case.

The fact that the KBS Tuff is not just "KBS Tuff material" but rather a mix of materials was noted before Fitch and Miller did the K-Ar testing:

Samples of a volcanic tuff (Leakey IA) and of pumice lumps in a calcareous matrix (Leakey II) were sent to us by Mr. Richard Leakey in July 1969 for an age determination feasibility study. ... Preliminary petrographic examination of the tuff sample revealed it to be a crystal-vitric-tuff rich in small pieces of pumice and minute crystal fragments set in a matrix of devitrifying volcanic dust. While much of this pyroclastic material was obviously juvenile, the presence of rnicrocline suggested possible contamination from the wall rocks of the vent. The fine grain-size prevented effective separation of juvenile and possibly non-juvenile components, and an exploratory conventional total rock K-Ar age determination was made finally on the washed and mixed 30/50 mesh fraction of the crushed sample. ...

The results of these age determinations are given in Table 1. From these results it was clear that an extraneous argon age discrepancy was present, and that it would only be possible to date this tuff by careful extraction of undoubtedly juvenile components for analysis. The pumice lumps (Leakey II) would have been suitable if fresh, but on examination they were found to be intensively calcified. Minute sanidine inclusions in the pumice were promising, however, and in reporting the results of this feasibility study we suggested that a search be made of the tuff exposures in the field for (a) less calcified pumice lumps, and (b) sanidine phenocrysts that could be conveniently separated.
{emphasis added}

Note "feasibility" and "exploratory". They strongly suspected the samples were contaminated with old material, and they didn't expect a good result from the K-Ar dating. They just did it to gather more data that might eventually come together to form a coherent whole, and like good scientists they reported the results ... but never proposed taht the tuff was that old. And, as they expected, the results came out not agreeing with other results because:


The samples were a mixture of old and new material
One of the two samples had reacted with something to form a non-original material


Those are the reasons the 200-ish mya dates were rejected. Why do you not accept those reasons?

They then obtained two fresher samples that seemed more suitable and dated them by K-Ar. They got:

Leakey 1B1 pumice whole rock: 3.63 ± 2.1 and 2.40 ± 1.0 mya
Leakey 1B2 feldspar: 2.38 ± 0.3 and 2.36 ± 0.3 mya

They didn’t like those large error bars on the pumice, but it was possible that they had good samples and good dates, although they still had questions:

At this stage it was apparent that for satisfactory dating of the tuff horizon answers were required for the following three questions: (i) was the crystal fraction (Leakey IB2) entirely juvenile in origin? (ii) were any argon losses or extraneous (that is to say, inherited or excess) argon discrepancies present? and (iii) could the experimental errors be reduced?
So they went for Ar-Ar analysis. Now, in those days, Ar-Ar was a new technique (first published in 1968, a year before Fitch & Miller's study), and hadn’t been refined to anywhere near the extent it is today. Step-heating Ar-Ar was even newer (hadn't even been published when Fitch & Miller carried out this study). But it looked like a good way to detect if there was any excess argon. Here’s my age-spectrum graph of their results on the feldspar:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y10/JonF/Fitch_and_Miller_Ar-Ar_feldspar.png

Now, that looks like a pretty good plateau at around 2.6 mya. (Of course, Davie, as one who makes claims about radiometric dating all the time, you know all about step-heating and plateaus and excess argon, right?)

After further discussion they concluded:

It can therefore be concluded that the best interpretation of the results of three conventional K–Ar age determinations and four 40Ar/39Ar age analyses on pumice, crystal and whole rock fractions of the tuff horizon in the Koobi Fora beds from east of Lake Rudolf in East Africa is that its age is very close to 2.6 m.y. (2.61 ± less than 0.26 m.y.). This is a Plio-Pleistocene age. In terms of the American succession it would seem to be equivalent to some part of the Blancan.

Alas for them, as more data was gathered from other areas this age became more non-consilient with other data, and was questioned. Several other researchers tested the tuff and got much lower ages; others got ages comparable to Fitch & Miller. More studies were run, more techniques tried. Eventually it was determined that the lowest reported age was wrong due to an experimental error, and the high band of ages were wrong due to insufficient separation of the old material, which turned out to be very difficult. But a procedure for doing so was developed, and the medium ages were replicated at several labs by several different methods. Science triumphs again!!1!!one1

Over to you, Davie.

[JonF]

I don't know. But I have sent a message to one of my contacts to gain insight into this question.

you do realise you are implying thousands of years though?

If you can get to my other questions and responses that would be ace.Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper ...
Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.

... which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY)
Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.

And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.
Yup. And careful investigation and cross-correlation ensure that they are detected. As Dr. Bertsche detected the problem by just the results from testing the Jericho sample without referrring to any expected result.

[David M]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.

No Dave this is the Crux of Your problem, the facts do not fit your assertion that sample dates that do not agree with the approximate age are discarded. This case amply demonstrates in fact that blind testing is not needed as the age was reported by the AMS lab irrespective of approximate age. Its not the AMS lab that didn't accept the dates either, although they suggested Argon contamination as a possible source - its the archeologists who decided that there must have been some sort of error for the simple fact that it lay such a huge distance outside wht was then known. And those archeologists didn't just discard a date that they didn't accept as accurate they investigated further to find out whether or not it was inaccurate.

In this case the date for the layer in which the fossil was found was nowhere near the approximate age as determined from the geology and associated fossils. As Argon contamination is one of the known factors that can affect the dating of volcanic rock using K-Ar, which is one of the reasons why the more accurate Ar-Ar method is used more often today, further investigation was needed.

Even the article you refered to from AiG earlier admits this "Thus, the KBS Tuff has been transported by and deposited from water. For this reason it has a great deal of foreign material in it, making it very difficult to get pure samples for dating." (7th Paragraph)

So what was done to find the truth about the dates of the layers - they carefully gathered additional samples and sent those off to be dated. These showed that the 230ma date was not confirmed as the correct date for the volcanic deposits (EDIT - added following) that correlate with the fossil. Further work has refined the dates for KNM-ER 1470.

Determining the probable age of a find from associated fossils is nothing to do with a strong belief in the evolutionary paradigm either - if previous radiometric dating has been used to show the period when a given species existed then finding further fossils of that species allows you to estimate the probable time period that you are looking at. The attempt to caricature the use of fossils to date geological layers as circular reasoning is mendacious in the extreme as it ignores the fact that radiometric dating of geologic layers was used to determine the age of such signature fossils when they are first discovered, once that age range of such a species is determioned it is valid to use that species to approximate the age of a rock layer and it is safe to do so because radiometric dating will report the age whether or not is in line with this estimate (as proven by this case).

Their estimate of the age based on other fossils had everything to do with radiometric dating, it was derived from prior radiometric dates for those species.

Your whole argument above stems from a lack of comprehension of the simple fact that known geologic processes can affect how easy it is to accurately date some finds (even AiG admits this) which is why care needs to be taken in gathering samples and a unproven assumption that "difficult" dates are discarded (an assumption refuted both by the posts of the person you falsely attributed an admission of this fact to and by this very example you try and use to justify your assumption).

[Dave Hawkins]

you do realise you are implying thousands of years though?

If you can get to my other questions and responses that would be ace.Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper ...
Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.

... which confirms that I was close with my 230 MY)
Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.

And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.
Yup. And careful investigation and cross-correlation ensure that they are detected. As Dr. Bertsche detected the problem by just the results from testing the Jericho sample without referrring to any expected result.This is amazing. Jon's quibbling about the fact that I mentioned 230 MY when the paper actually said closer to 220. Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.

[Dave Hawkins]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.

No Dave this is the Crux of Your problem, the facts do not fit your assertion that sample dates that do not agree with the approximate age are discarded. This case amply demonstrates in fact that blind testing is not needed as the age was reported by the AMS lab irrespective of approximate age. Its not the AMS lab that didn't accept the dates either, although they suggested Argon contamination as a possible source - its the archeologists who decided that there must have been some sort of error for the simple fact that it lay such a huge distance outside wht was then known. And those archeologists didn't just discard a date that they didn't accept as accurate they investigated further to find out whether or not it was inaccurate.

In this case the date for the layer in which the fossil was found was nowhere near the approximate age as determined from the geology and associated fossils. As Argon contamination is one of the known factors that can affect the dating of volcanic rock using K-Ar, which is one of the reasons why the more accurate Ar-Ar method is used more often today, further investigation was needed.

Even the article you refered to from AiG earlier admits this "Thus, the KBS Tuff has been transported by and deposited from water. For this reason it has a great deal of foreign material in it, making it very difficult to get pure samples for dating." (7th Paragraph)

So what was done to find the truth about the dates of the layers - they carefully gathered additional samples and sent those off to be dated. These showed that the 230ma date was not confirmed as the correct date for the volcanic deposits. Further work has refined the dates for KNM-ER 1470.

Determining the probable age of a find from associated fossils is nothing to do with a strong belief in the evolutionary paradigm either - if previous radiometric dating has been used to show the period when a given species existed then finding further fossils of that species allows you to estimate the probable time period that you are looking at. The attempt to caricature the use of fossils to date geological layers as circular reasoning is mendacious in the extreme as it ignores the fact that radiometric dating of geologic layers was used to determine the age of such signature fossils when they are first discovered, once that age range of such a species is determioned it is valid to use that species to approximate the age of a rock layer and it is safe to do so because radiometric dating will report the age whether or not is in line with this estimate (as proven by this case).

Their estimate of the age based on other fossils had everything to do with radiometric dating, it was derived from prior radiometric dates for those species.

Your whole argument above stems from a lack of comprehension of the simple fact that known geologic processes can affect how easy it is to accurately date some finds (even AiG admits this) which is why care needs to be taken in gathering samples and a unproven assumption that "difficult" dates are discarded (an assumption refuted both by the posts of the person you falsely attributed an admission of this fact to and by this very example you try and use to justify your assumption).David M is lost in a fog of hopelessly circular reasoning and doesn't realize it. All one can hope for is that he re-reads what he has just written and the light bulb eventually comes on.

[VoxRat]

This is amazing. Jon's quibbling about the fact that I mentioned 230 MY when the paper actually said closer to 220. Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.
I'm not going to worry about whether Jon is "quibbling"...
However, you've just referred to "overwhelming contrary evidence"

reference please?

Because we haven't seen any in this thread.

This argument by constant intimation that somewhere, somehow, there exists this "overwhelming contrary evidence" - that you never get around to sharing - is getting really old.

[Constant Mews]

This post either shows great ignorance or great dishonesty ... not sure which. I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate. And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.

No Dave this is the Crux of Your problem, the facts do not fit your assertion that sample dates that do not agree with the approximate age are discarded. This case amply demonstrates in fact that blind testing is not needed as the age was reported by the AMS lab irrespective of approximate age. Its not the AMS lab that didn't accept the dates either, although they suggested Argon contamination as a possible source - its the archeologists who decided that there must have been some sort of error for the simple fact that it lay such a huge distance outside wht was then known. And those archeologists didn't just discard a date that they didn't accept as accurate they investigated further to find out whether or not it was inaccurate.

In this case the date for the layer in which the fossil was found was nowhere near the approximate age as determined from the geology and associated fossils. As Argon contamination is one of the known factors that can affect the dating of volcanic rock using K-Ar, which is one of the reasons why the more accurate Ar-Ar method is used more often today, further investigation was needed.

Even the article you refered to from AiG earlier admits this "Thus, the KBS Tuff has been transported by and deposited from water. For this reason it has a great deal of foreign material in it, making it very difficult to get pure samples for dating." (7th Paragraph)

So what was done to find the truth about the dates of the layers - they carefully gathered additional samples and sent those off to be dated. These showed that the 230ma date was not confirmed as the correct date for the volcanic deposits. Further work has refined the dates for KNM-ER 1470.

Determining the probable age of a find from associated fossils is nothing to do with a strong belief in the evolutionary paradigm either - if previous radiometric dating has been used to show the period when a given species existed then finding further fossils of that species allows you to estimate the probable time period that you are looking at. The attempt to caricature the use of fossils to date geological layers as circular reasoning is mendacious in the extreme as it ignores the fact that radiometric dating of geologic layers was used to determine the age of such signature fossils when they are first discovered, once that age range of such a species is determioned it is valid to use that species to approximate the age of a rock layer and it is safe to do so because radiometric dating will report the age whether or not is in line with this estimate (as proven by this case).

Their estimate of the age based on other fossils had everything to do with radiometric dating, it was derived from prior radiometric dates for those species.

Your whole argument above stems from a lack of comprehension of the simple fact that known geologic processes can affect how easy it is to accurately date some finds (even AiG admits this) which is why care needs to be taken in gathering samples and a unproven assumption that "difficult" dates are discarded (an assumption refuted both by the posts of the person you falsely attributed an admission of this fact to and by this very example you try and use to justify your assumption).David M is lost in a fog of hopelessly circular reasoning and doesn't realize it. All one can hope for is that he re-reads what he has just written and the light bulb eventually comes on.

No, Dave. The problem is what David M states: you don't understand the basic issues here. This accounts for your inability to understand the concept of consilience. Data is determined to be anomalous not because of some predetermined 'atheistic' paradigm, but because it does not fit with other data.

That's why your entire line of argument concerning radiometric dating and varves is such an egregious failure: you simply can't explain consilience and resort to making up lies such as the one you made above.

Because it is a lie, Dave. Scientists - a group you have no familiarity with whatsoever save for your exposure on these message boards - do not discard data with does not fit their beliefs. They look for reasons that data does not fit given it's failure to fit with other data.

Only creationists - religious fanatics ignorant and contemptuous of science - discard data that does not fit their beliefs.

You're a perfect example.

[Obd]

Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper ...
Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.


Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.

And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.
Yup. And careful investigation and cross-correlation ensure that they are detected. As Dr. Bertsche detected the problem by just the results from testing the Jericho sample without referrring to any expected result.This is amazing. Jon's quibbling about the fact that I mentioned 230 MY when the paper actually said closer to 220. Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.

I sure hope this isn't a convenient way to ignore Jon's excellent post on the KBS tuff here (http://www.talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165).

[JonF]

Yes, I realize that. Keep in mind the wild discrepancy pointed out by Lubenow's article on the Koobi Fora tuff ... ~220 MYO vs. <2 MYO!! (Thanks, Voxrat for sending me the Nature paper ...
Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.
Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.
Over to you, Davie.

And don't forget about the wild discrepancy pointed out by Dr. Bertsche on the Jericho wood ... 1000 AD vs. a real age of >1000 BC!! So yes, I think wildly discrepant results are possible.
Yup. And careful investigation and cross-correlation ensure that they are detected. As Dr. Bertsche detected the problem by just the results from testing the Jericho sample without referrring to any expected result.This is amazing. Jon's quibbling about the fact that I mentioned 230 MY when the paper actually said closer to 220.
It's a minor but telling point. (I note that you have not responded to any of my many other points.) But your repeated use of the 230 mya date shows that you are not skeptical of anything AIG says. And, while it's a minor mathematical error, it's a major ethical error that calls everything they write into question.

Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.
Talk aobut projection! I see you are afraid to respond to this post (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165) in which I laid out the history of dating the KBS Tuff with great gobs of evidence and discussion. Especially:

You've ignored it so many times in the past, why should I expect anything different now? But I'll try. ...

They strongly suspected the samples were contaminated with old material, and they didn't expect a good result from the K-Ar dating. They just did it to gather more data that might eventually come together to form a coherent whole, and like good scientists they reported the results ... but never proposed that the tuff was that old. And, as they expected, the results came out not agreeing with other results because:


The samples were a mixture of old and new material
One of the two samples had reacted with something to form a non-original material


Those are the reasons the 200-ish mya dates were rejected. Why do you not accept those reasons?
...

Over to you, Davie.
Why do you reject those reasons for discarding the 220-ish mya dates, Davie?

Over to you .. again.

[JonF]

Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.


Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.


Yup. And careful investigation and cross-correlation ensure that they are detected. As Dr. Bertsche detected the problem by just the results from testing the Jericho sample without referrring to any expected result.This is amazing. Jon's quibbling about the fact that I mentioned 230 MY when the paper actually said closer to 220. Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.

I sure hope this isn't a convenient way to ignore Jon's excellent post on the KBS tuff here (http://www.talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165).
Of course, that's exactly what it is.

[ericmurphy]

I have not said that the 230 MYO dates were not reported. I merely say they were not accepted as accurate.
But they were accurate, Dave. That's what you're not getting. The problem was not that the dates were not accurate. The problem was that what was being dated was being improperly associated with the fossils.

Do you get the distinction?

And the interesting question is WHY were they not accepted. Well, of course because it was not a blind test. IOW, they knew about some fossil material in the strata and they had strong preconception about how old that fossil material was which had nothing to do with radiometric dating and everything to do with their strong beliefs in the evolution paradigm. This type of thing is the crux of the problem.

Except you're not getting it, Dave. The problem was not that the dating techniques were inaccurate. The problem was that the wrong things were being dated.

[JonF]

Bet the copy I sent you was better, including both the orignal scans and an OCR's version.
Close .. but wrong. 230 mya is not one of the dates reproted, none of the dates reported round to 230 mya, the average is significantly different from 230 mya, and your "about 230 mya" is prima facie incorrect. You and the AIG masters you slavishly and unquestioningly follow were wrong.

So, Dave, now you're all set to discuss the reasons Fitch and Miller gave suspecting and discarding the 220-ish mya dates, and why you reject these reasons. Over to you.
Over to you, Davie.


It's a minor but telling point. (I note that you have not responded to any of my many other points.) But your repeated use of the 230 mya date shows that you are not skeptical of anything AIG says. And, while it's a minor mathematical error, it's a major ethical error that calls everything they write into question.
Well, Davie?

Well ... I guess it figures. When you are desperate to defend your paradigm in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, you'll try any stunt in the book. At least some of the folks here are reasonable and don't play these games ... like Jet Black, Febble and a few others.
Talk aobut projection! I see you are afraid to respond to this post (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165) in which I laid out the history of dating the KBS Tuff with great gobs of evidence and discussion. Especially:

You've ignored it so many times in the past, why should I expect anything different now? But I'll try. ...

They strongly suspected the samples were contaminated with old material, and they didn't expect a good result from the K-Ar dating. They just did it to gather more data that might eventually come together to form a coherent whole, and like good scientists they reported the results ... but never proposed that the tuff was that old. And, as they expected, the results came out not agreeing with other results because:


The samples were a mixture of old and new material
One of the two samples had reacted with something to form a non-original material


Those are the reasons the 200-ish mya dates were rejected. Why do you not accept those reasons?
...

Over to you, Davie.
Why do you reject those reasons for discarding the 220-ish mya dates, Davie?

Over to you .. again.
Your turn, Davie. Why do you reject the reasons given, with supporting evidence, for discarding the 220-ish myo dates?

Give me a better reason and I'll consider it.
I've given you two better reasons, Davesicle. Get considerin'.

[Dave Hawkins]

......the Koobi Fora example is quite clear......

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

[VoxRat]

......the Koobi Fora example is quite clear......

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me. What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?I sent Dave the Fitch & Miller paper.
He apparently didn't read it.
If anyone else is interested, PM me with your e-mail address.

[Jet Black]

......the Koobi Fora example is quite clear......

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.

[Lucretius III]

As a non scientist all I can say is that the dating of this tuff (new word/name for me so I have at least learned something ) and the so called "anomalous" result has shown how accurate this dating method actually is, rather than the reverse as Dave would have it.

[Dave Hawkins]

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results? What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO? Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.

[VoxRat]

Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results? What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO? Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? No, I suppose if the results were internally consistent - i.e. you kept getting the same date with all the samples you tested - AND if the results didn't contradict other firmly established facts firmly enmeshed in the consilience of science - like the fact that apes did not exist hundreds of millions of years ago - no one would notice that anything's amiss.

Ah, but Dave would! Because it contradicts his bible!
Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.
And by this, you're protesting that you're not gullible?
Despite the fact that you've swallowed the YEC dogma, hook, line and sinker?

[JonF]

......the Koobi Fora example is quite clear......

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon,
Flat-out lie. No, Davie, their stated reasons are not excess argon. You don't even know what "excess argon" means, do you?

Their stated reasons are:


The samples were a mixture of old and new material
One of the two samples had reacted with something to form a non-original material


but how do they know?
By the evidence they cited in their paper

Well they don't really.
Unsupported assertion. First you need to establish, by evidence and reasoned argumentation, that there is good reason for rejecting their evidence and argument. You've got no excuse, Davie ... you've got two copies of the scans and an OCR'd copy of the paper.

So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA.
Don't get ahead of yourself. First you need to establish that there is good reason to suppose that they don't know. That means addressing their stated reasons, evidence, and argument.

Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?
Nope. Makes you look extremely biased, and gullible for accepting and promulgating AIG/Lubenow's crap without question, and like a drooling idiot for repeating your unsupported assertions without addressing the responses that have been posted, but so far Fitch and Miller are lookin' fine.

[JonF]

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me. What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?I sent Dave the Fitch & Miller paper.
He apparently didn't read it.
If anyone else is interested, PM me with your e-mail address.
I sent it to him, too. Mine contains both the scans and OCR'd text (with a few obvious OCR errors). That's where I got the large swaths of text I quoted and he ignored.

[JonF]

Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results?
They did. As is clearly shown in the quotes I posted and the two copies of the paper you have. And I addressed your question in my discussion of those quotes. You aren't paying attention, Davie-pie.

What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO?
THen they would have continuied on a different course, which one we don't know for sure.

Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.
You sure accepted AIG/Lubenow's 230 mya without question, and you never looked into any of their claims. Yup, Davie, sure looks like you just fell off the turnip truck.

Yes, all that sciency sounding stuff (still waiting for some evidence that it's poppycock) was brought up then. You need to respond to what they said about it.

[Dave Hawkins]

No, Davie, their stated reasons are not excess argon. You don't even know what "excess argon" means, do you?Sorry. I meant argon loss. Yes, I know what it means. I was moving too fast and got it reversed. Argon loss supposedly give too great an age. Excess argon supposedly gives too young an age.

[VoxRat]

No, Davie, their stated reasons are not excess argon. You don't even know what "excess argon" means, do you?Sorry. I meant argon loss. Yes, I know what it means. I was moving too fast and got it reversed. Argon loss supposedly give too great an age. Excess argon supposedly gives too young an age.Huh?
Why?
I don't think you have any idea how this technology works.

[JonF]

No, Davie, their stated reasons are not excess argon. You don't even know what "excess argon" means, do you?Sorry. I meant argon loss. Yes, I know what it means. I was moving too fast and got it reversed. Argon loss supposedly give too great an age. Excess argon supposedly gives too young an age.
Exactly 180 degrees wrong, Davie.

And you're stil wrong about Fitch & Mller, Davie. They did not explain the results by argon loss, nor did they explain them by excess argon. Look at the reasons they stated in their paper (which have also been posted on this thread at least three times), look at the evidence and discussion in their paper and on this thread, and respond to them. Drop the unsupported assertions and the regurgiations of the crap you've unhesitatingly swallowed.

[ericmurphy]

Dave, you still haven't addressed the fact that the 230 my age for the sample in question is correct. The problem is not unreliability of radiometric dating techniques. The problem, in this specific instance, was making sure that the samples being dated were actually contemporaneous with the fossils being dated. Again, this is an issue with experimental and observational methods. It does not call into question the accuracy of radiometric dating techniques.

Your objections are the equivalent of noting that the patient died on being given the wrong medication, wrong because mislabeled, and then concluding that the correct medication is toxic.

[JonF]

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.
Not quite correct. You're condensing too much. There were two rounds of rejection, one almost instantaneous and the other taking years.

The 220-ish MYA dates were rejected based on the fact 1. that the material was obviously a mixture of old and new and 2. one of the two samples had obviously been modified since it was initially laid down. The tests were performed in the hope but not the expectation of learning something useful, and were not expected to yield valid dates.

Within the same study they asked for and got two more samples, attempted to separate out the younger material, and did Ar-Ar dating (at the time a very young technology) and Ar-Ar step-heating dating (at the time a very very young, even unpublished, technology). These are really cool technologies; if you don't understand 'em see http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%205 for a brief description; it's really Ar-Ar step-heating that he's talking about). They got an apparently good result of 2.6 mya. Although that was pretty old according to most expectations, it was possible that skull ER-1470 (found below the tuff, see Creationist Arguments: Homo habilis (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_habilis.html)) was indeed that old.

But within a few years things got more problematic. Other studies came up with dates around 1.8 mya, one as low as 1.6 mya, and still others confirmed the 2-6-ish mya dates. So something funny was going on. Another significant was pig fossils; they're a really good index fossil in that area, and using them as such (to correlate between different areas) combined with solidly-established dates was pointing more to the 1.8-ish mya dates.

Eventually the 1.5 mya date was traced to an error in using a lab balance, and the 2.6-ish mya dates were demonstrated to be the result of insufficient separation of the older material, and the 1.8-ish mya dates were confirmed in several labs using several different techniques. Case closed, and another triumph for science.

Mark Isaac's discussion at Claim CD031: (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD031.html) (to which I supplied some editorial input) is good and contains relevant references.

[Jet Black]

Not quite correct. You're condensing too much. There were two rounds of rejection, one almost instantaneous and the other taking years.



yeap, thanks for clarifying that.

[Jet Black]

Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results? What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO? Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.

Yes I do expect you to believe it, because that's what it says in the paper.

"Preliminary petrographic examination of the tuff sample revealed it to be a crystal-vitric-tuff rich in small pieces of pumice and minute crystal fragments set in a matrix of devitrifying volcanic dust. While much of this pyroclastic material was obviously juvenile, the presence of microcline suggested possible contamination from the wall rocks of the vent. The fine grain size prevented separation of juvenile and possibly non-juvenile components and an exploratory conventional total rock K-Ar age determination was made finally on the washed and mixed 30/50 mesh fraction of the crushed sample"

so basically, they could see that possibly non juvenile material was mixed in with the obviously juvenile rock, and so the first tests were to see if there was contamination from the older rock. They then realised that the only way to test the tuff was to be far far more careful in looking at the rock.

This kind of exploratory testing is very common in science, I do it myself in experiments. We'll do some basic experiments to kind of sketch out the situation, see what we need to look for, and often those results are really crap, and help us to realise things that we had overlooked and deal with them in the more precise measurements.

So the answer to your objection is contained within the paper. Indeed "all this sciency sounding poppycock" was contained in the opening paragraph of the very first paper of the discussion.

[Febble]

"Preliminary petrographic examination of the tuff sample revealed it to be a crystal-vitric-tuff rich in small pieces of pumice and minute crystal fragments set in a matrix of devitrifying volcanic dust. While much of this pyroclastic material was obviously juvenile, the presence of microcline suggested possible contamination from the wall rocks of the vent. The fine grain size prevented separation of juvenile and possibly non-juvenile components and an explanatory conventional total rock K-Ar age determination was made finally on the washed and mixed 30/50 mesh fraction of the crushed sample"

Did they mean "exploratory"? I don't understand the sentence as it stands.

[JonF]

"Preliminary petrographic examination of the tuff sample revealed it to be a crystal-vitric-tuff rich in small pieces of pumice and minute crystal fragments set in a matrix of devitrifying volcanic dust. While much of this pyroclastic material was obviously juvenile, the presence of microcline suggested possible contamination from the wall rocks of the vent. The fine grain size prevented separation of juvenile and possibly non-juvenile components and an explanatory conventional total rock K-Ar age determination was made finally on the washed and mixed 30/50 mesh fraction of the crushed sample"

Did they mean "exploratory"? I don't understand the sentence as it stands.
Yes. I don't know where JB go that. It's correct in my extended quote from yesterday (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165) (which does include couple of OCR errors, but none that big).

{ABE}My quote includes the opening sentence:

Samples of a volcanic tuff (Leakey IA) and of pumice lumps in a calcareous matrix (Leakey II) were sent to us by Mr. Richard Leakey in July 1969 for an age determination feasibility study. ... {emphasis added}
\
Which reinforces the point JB made.

[Jet Black]

Yes. I don't know where JB go that. It's correct in my extended quote from yesterday (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=20066&postcount=165) (which does include couple of OCR errors, but none that big).


bleh, copied by hand and made the mistakes.

[RAFH]

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.

Well, that's a really nice just-so story JB, but to convince TGBd, you'll have to do a lot better than that. He's got the babble and its holey as all hell.

[Faid]

......the Koobi Fora example is quite clear......

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?Dave, read other people's posts. The reasons were not just "assuming excess argon" out of nowhere: The reasons were geological, and they were known concerns BEFORE the first testing.

[Faid]

Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results? What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO? Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.Your reading skills seem to belong to someone born yesterday, though: The sample was sent to the lab with instructions to determine the feasibility of RC testing!

Look for the post yourself. I'm tired of telling you you should read other people's posts.

[ninewands]

Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.Then why didn't they realize all of this PRIOR TO doing the test? Thus realizing that this sort of testing would yield wrong results? What if the first tests had yielded 2MYO instead of 220 MYO? Do you really expect me to believe that all this sciency sounding poppycock you're bringing up would have been voiced then? Come on, JB. I wasn't born yesterday.
No, Dave, it wouldn't have for the simple reason that if the sample had yielded an age of 2 my the result would not have been incorrect. Do you ever think before you post Dave? For that matter, do you ever use your head for anything other than to hold up your hat?

[Constant Mews]

And once again, Dave bails out of a thread when he has been shown to be utterly in error and lying about material he has barely read.

I thought this forum was going to try to work harder at keeping posters accountable?

[Febble]

And once again, Dave bails out of a thread when he has been shown to be utterly in error and lying about material he has barely read.

I thought this forum was going to try to work harder at keeping posters accountable?

Well, to be fair, the thread has had at least two splits, so it's not clear which of them he's "bailed out of"!

The point of splitting threads is, of course, to try to maintain the integrity of separate lines of argument, in attempt to pursue each one to a conclusion.

But we (or I, any way) are still learning the ropes, and the implementation of forum principles is still being thrashed out. Come over to the Town Hall and give us some input.

[JonF]

And once again, Dave bails out of a thread when he has been shown to be utterly in error and lying about material he has barely read.
Plus he's a morning (mostly) poster. He's got lots more ignorant posts to make about material he hasn't read, and posts and relevant information he's ignored.

[Jet Black]

And once again, Dave bails out of a thread when he has been shown to be utterly in error and lying about material he has barely read.

I thought this forum was going to try to work harder at keeping posters accountable?

(this post is not made in mod or admin capacity)

from when he made his last posts I have not seen him online, so the accusations of him bailing out are rather pre-emptive at this stage. Do remember that he is not obliged to post, and certainly not obliged to spend all of his free and working time on the internet talking to us. Accountability is in making sure that people do back things up, not in making sure that they spend every waking moment on TR.

[Pappy Jack]

And once again, Dave bails out of a thread when he has been shown to be utterly in error and lying about material he has barely read.

I thought this forum was going to try to work harder at keeping posters accountable?

(this post is not made in mod or admin capacity)

from when he made his last posts I have not seen him online, so the accusations of him bailing out are rather pre-emptive at this stage. Do remember that he is not obliged to post, and certainly not obliged to spend all of his free and working time on the internet talking to us. Accountability is in making sure that people do back things up, not in making sure that they spend every waking moment on TR.
Absolutely. I may disagree and take serious issue with much of what Dave posts, but the intervals at which he posts are at his discretion and if he is unable to respond for some time on a particular thread that's fair enough. Like the rest of us, Dave has another life with all the resulting obligations and hassles.

The serious point that CM makes, however, and that most of us are familiar with from previous experience, is that Dave has a habit of bailing out of threads leaving many serious questions unanswered. He then surfaces elsewhere, repeating the same points and ignoring the same questions. This becomes aggravating.

[Dave Hawkins]

No, Davie, their stated reasons are not excess argon. You don't even know what "excess argon" means, do you?Sorry. I meant argon loss. Yes, I know what it means. I was moving too fast and got it reversed. Argon loss supposedly give too great an age. Excess argon supposedly gives too young an age.
Exactly 180 degrees wrong, Davie.

And you're stil wrong about Fitch & Mller, Davie. They did not explain the results by argon loss, nor did they explain them by excess argon. Look at the reasons they stated in their paper (which have also been posted on this thread at least three times), look at the evidence and discussion in their paper and on this thread, and respond to them. Drop the unsupported assertions and the regurgiations of the crap you've unhesitatingly swallowed.OK, I think you're right. I had it right at first and I reversed it based on what you said. Let's get this straight as it can be a bit confusing. The way it works is that K decays to Ar over time and so the more Ar that's measured in the sample, the older the sample is because it's had more time for K to decay into Ar, right? So now if some of this Ar leaks out, we will measure LESS Ar which means a YOUNGER apparent age, right? And if the age is "too old" this means they measured MORE Ar than expected and they explain this as excess Ar, such as in this example Analysis of the lunar samples from Apollo 11 indicates anomalous compositions for several elements. In particular, the isotope 40Ar is overabundant as compared with 36Ar in the fine-grain samples, the ratio being much greater than that expected in the solar wind composition (1) and several times greater than could be accounted for by in situ decay of 40K (2).

Lunar Atmosphere as a Source of Argon-40 and Other Lunar Surface Elements
R. H. Manka 1 and F. C. Michel 2
Science 17 July 1970:
Vol. 169. no. 3942, pp. 278 - 280
DOI: 10.1126/science.169.3942.278
So I was right the first time and you confused me. Fitch and Miller DID reject the ~220MYO date because of excess Argon. Their words confirm this ... From these results it was clear that an extraneous argon age discrepancy was present ...So I'm not clear what you were objecting to in the first place.

[Dave Hawkins]

so tell me roughly what's going on there then. We can get to woodmorappe, or is that Penzeckis' stuff a bit later. I don't really see how 300 published anomalous dates is indicative of the whole of radiometric dating being wrong, so you'll have to explain that to me.Tell you roughly what's going on? What's going on is that the strata was dated at ~220 MYO but Fitch and Miller rejected the results. Why? Well their stated reasons are excess argon, but how do they know? Well they don't really. So one is left to speculate that the real reason is that there were hominid fossils found there and their pre-existing belief is that hominids didn't exist 220 MYA. Now ... don't you agree that this makes Fitch and Miller look extremely biased?

no, that's not why the results were rejected. The tuff in question is quite a complex mix of differently aged rocks because it was part of a volcanic flow which mixed rocks together. The rejection was based on a number of studies which found younger ages to the tuff - and the justification for the younger ages was better supported than the old ones, regardless of the presence of hominid fossils.

It's like if someone tried to date building I live in. Someone checks the stones which make the facade and ground floor of the building and finds that the building was constructed in the 18th century because of the characteristic method of cutting the stone and that the stone matches an old church at the back of the building. Someone else then looks and finds that the bricks are actually early 21st century. along with the interior and a big panel on the wall that says "built in 2003"... what's going on? Well the front and facade were taken from an old convent on the site, so the building is actually made out of stones cut in different centuries. The same sort of thing is going on here. We have a volcanic flow that has got older rocks mixed in with it, and hence one has to be really careful about how one dates such rocks. your claims that they said "oh shit this is too old, reject the results" is again accusing them of fraud. You're doing the wrong thing in saying that the error casts doubts on the method of dating itself, rather than looking at the actual studies which can explain the deviation from the younger age and better justify the younger age.JB ... they rejected the results because they were way too old to fit their preconceptions. I just read the whole paper again and it is obvious that they had a firm idea of the age range they were looking for ... something less than 3 MY. The first test they did was a "feasability study" to see if the strata could be dated reliably. When it came back as ~220MYO they concluded that it could only be dated by "careful extraction of undoubtedly juvenile components."

UNDOUBTEDLY JUVENILE COMPONENTS??!!

How do you know they are "undoubtedly juvenile"?? Not by radiometric dating. Remember, they are being very selective this time around because they weren't selective enough the first time, i.e. the results were way off (~220 MYO instead of the hoped for <3 MYO). Then how? The only way I can figure is biostratigraphic dating. That is ... "we have a hominid fossil and hominid fossils can't be older than 3 MY."

If you can't see the utter biased nature of this whole affair, then I give up. You are hopelessly wedded to your beliefs and you aren't interested in the truth.

[Lucretius III]

Dave THIS is how they knew that there were "Juvenile components "

Originally Posted by Fitch and Miller, 1970
"Preliminary petrographic examination of the tuff sample revealed it to be a crystal-vitric-tuff rich in small pieces of pumice and minute crystal fragments set in a matrix of devitrifying volcanic dust. While much of this pyroclastic material was obviously juvenile, the presence of microcline suggested possible contamination from the wall rocks of the vent. The fine grain size prevented separation of juvenile and possibly non-juvenile components and an exploratory conventional total rock K-Ar age determination was made finally on the washed and mixed 30/50 mesh fraction of the crushed sample"

Nothing at all to do with hominid fossils in the slightest

Instead of just hecking Dave why don't you actually read the papers and who knows you may learn something ?

[Febble]

UNDOUBTEDLY JUVENILE COMPONENTS??!!

How do you know they are "undoubtedly juvenile"?? Not by radiometric dating. Remember, they are being very selective this time around because they weren't selective enough the first time, i.e. the results were way off (~220 MYO instead of the hoped for <3 MYO). Then how? The only way I can figure is biostratigraphic dating. That is ... "we have a hominid fossil and hominid fossils can't be older than 3 MY."

If you can't see the utter biased nature of this whole affair, then I give up. You are hopelessly wedded to your beliefs and you aren't interested in the truth.

Dave, please, please, please, would you read The Relativity of Wrong (http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm) by Asimov.

It's only short.

Then would you google "Bayes' theorem".

Then would you read a text on hypothesis testing.

Then, answer this question: if I am doing an psychometric test on a participant with Down's syndrome, am I being biased if I first of all make sure that I have testing instruments that have a low "floor", and leave instruments with a high "ceiling" on the shelf?

I'll give you my answer: no. The probability that the participant will have an IQ in the normal range or below is far greater than that the participant will have an abnormally high IQ. Of course it's possible - but it's improbable, but more to the point, there is nothing to stop me investigating it if it turns out to be the case.

In science we do not reinvent the wheel each time we investigate something. We start with the model we have - with our priors (Check out Bayes). Sometimes we need to revisit those priors.

But if I have a sample of EEG data, for example, and one channel has a strong 50 hz signal - am I biasing my results by throwing out that channel, instead of wondering whether the person's whose EEG it is is churning out a 50hz signal on one electrode? When I know perfectly well that 50 hz noise arises from contamination from the mains AC electrical supply, and simply indicates high impedances in that channel?

No - because my prior is that a 50 hz signal on a single channel indicates 50zh noise. Similarly, if you were dating a piece of volcanic material, and a plastic doll's arm was stuck to the sample with a piece of chewing gum, would you be biasing your results by assuming that the plastic doll's arm and chewing gum were a recent accretion, and not part of the original material?

No, because it is far more probable that the plastic and chewing gum are irrelevant "noise".

I'm sorry, Dave, but this post is simply an example of your lack of knowledge of how science works. What you think is "bias" is in fact good methodology. Bias is an important consideration in science, and must not be dismissed, but your approach is both naive and wrong. It's wrong, because, importantly, the assessment was made BEFORE testing. A priori hypothesis are much more powerful than post hoc hypotheses, and distinguishing between the two is one of the many ways in which scientists seek to minimise sources of bias.

In fact I might start a thread on bias. It's one of my favorite subjects. And it obsesses all scientists. It's what statisticians spend their whole lives trying to eliminate. We know about it. This isn't it.

[Jet Black]

How do you know they are "undoubtedly juvenile"?? Not by radiometric dating.



how do you think they identified the undoubtedly juvenile stuff? They had already said before the tests that there was a bunch of juvenile stuff and a bunch of stuff that might not be, so it seems that they could identify the clearly juvenile stuff beforehand and were concerned about possible contaminants from the vent walls.

[Dave Hawkins]

How do you know they are "undoubtedly juvenile"?? Not by radiometric dating.



how do you think they identified the undoubtedly juvenile stuff? They had already said before the tests that there was a bunch of juvenile stuff and a bunch of stuff that might not be, so it seems that they could identify the clearly juvenile stuff beforehand and were concerned about possible contaminants from the vent walls.But HOW? HOW can they identify juvenile stuff beforehand PRIOR TO doing any RM dating? HOW HOW HOW?

[VoxRat]

...So I was right the first time and you confused me. "I was wrong, but it's your fault!"
If you can't see the utter biased nature of this whole affair, then I give up. Please do.

You've just admitted you have the most tenuous, at best, grasp of the whole technology in the first place, and yet you're dead certain the authors are reporting their bias, not their science.


You are hopelessly wedded to your beliefs and you aren't interested in the truth.:rolleyes:

[Febble]

How do you know they are "undoubtedly juvenile"?? Not by radiometric dating.



how do you think they identified the undoubtedly juvenile stuff? They had already said before the tests that there was a bunch of juvenile stuff and a bunch of stuff that might not be, so it seems that they could identify the clearly juvenile stuff beforehand and were concerned about possible contaminants from the vent walls.But HOW? HOW can they identify juvenile stuff beforehand PRIOR TO doing any RM dating? HOW HOW HOW?

Think, Dave! Before you can do a test on material, you need to make sure that the material you want to test is the material you've actually got! And if it's got unidentfied lumps of what looks like different stuff in it, you know you are unlikely to get an accurate result. And if experience tells you that the lumps of different stuff are likely to be more recent than the stuff you are interested in, then you will expect a younger-than-true date. On the other hand, if the other stuff is clearly older, you will expect an older-than-true date. If you don't know what the different stuff is, you won't know which direction the error is likely to go - all you will know is that the date won't be very reliable, because your sample isn't homogeneous.

In this case they had some reason to think the extraneous stuff was more juvenile. Dunno, why. But it doesn't matter, because the point is that they identified the potential problem BEFORE it was tested, it wasn't a post hoc rationalization AFTERwards.

(And have you read that Asimov essay yet?)

[Pappy Jack]

....If you can't see the utter biased nature of this whole affair, then I give up. You are hopelessly wedded to your beliefs and you aren't interested in the truth.
Dave, look into a mirror. You must be able to see that this is exactly how your faith in Creationism appears to most of us here. The last sentence in this quote describes yourself perfectly. You seem interested not at all in accepting any evidence that implies an Earth and Universe much older than 6,500 years.