Does Radiometric Dating Yield Inaccurate Results?

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http://www.trueorigin.org/dating.asp#top

Read the whole thing.

Now, after reading this, how can anyone be so certain of the accuracy of radiometric dating techniques?

[juliod]

how can anyone be so certain of the accuracy of radiometric dating techniques?

What do you mean by "so certain" and "accuracy"?

No scientist takes an individual experiment (including dating methods) as an absolute. All techniques are subject to error, contamination, artifacts, etc. To the extent that some of the criticisms in that article may have some validity they are already taken into account by the scientific community.

Two things to think about:

1) Even if all the dates are wildly innaccurate, 100% of the data still supports evolution and contradicts creationism.

2) No creationist has ever shown an alternative analysis of any data that supports creationism in any way.

DanZ

[ST88]

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Thank you for your question. It would help the rest of us greatly if you could provide some relevant text of that linked page in your post and allow us to see your conclusions on them instead of sending us to an outside site with no idea of what we might be reading. A summary would be OK, also.

A lot of issues are brought up on that site, so it would be helpful for the purposes of this thread for you to help us out a little by defining the problems, showing the inconsistencies, etc. prior to asking your question. This isn't a mandate, it's a request to make the experience less of a lecture and more of a debate.

[steen]

Seconding the above posts. After all, what creationists usually claim regarding radiometric dating has no relevance to how it is actually done. That article already makes claims based on single data points, f.ex. So it from a cursory glance is already making deceptive claims. So yes please indeed provide some specifics.

In the meanwhile, here is some thoughts about radiometric dating by a Christian Scientist:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

ASA is the American Scientific Affiliation, which bills themselves as "Science in Christian Perspective."

[starseyer]

From what I understand about radiometric dating, it is not accurate in the sense of being about to pinpoint dates. Depending on the method used, it can provide a more or less broad range of dates to work with. And, of course, the scientists don't rely on a single method exclusively. When several different methods all give compatable results, I think that is pretty darn good evidence that the results are good.

BTW, thanks for the ASA resource! It's nice to see a viewpoint on science by Christians who go beyond just saying "God did it, and that's it!"

[jwu]

Correct, and depending on the calibration curves there can be different candidates for the age range. There can be more than one spike on the graph which shows the probabilities of different ages.

E.g. a 40% chance that something is somewhere between 2500 and 2550 years old, a 5% chance that it's between 2550 and 2600 years old and then another spike with a 50% chance of an age between 2600 and 2650 years.

Usually these spikes are quite close to each other, but it's worth mentioning nonetheless.

Like this:

[micatala]

http://www.trueorigin.org/dating.asp#top

Read the whole thing.

Now, after reading this, how can anyone be so certain of the accuracy of radiometric dating techniques?

Early in the article, there are links to evidence for a young earth and sun. Two of these no longer work.

The third leads to this ICR webpage which includes this article, claiming to have 14 examples of evidence for a young world. The author is Humphries. The 14 are:

1. Galaxies "wind themselves up" too fast.
2. Too few supernova remnants.
3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.
7. Strata bent too much.
8. Biological material decays too fast.
9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years.
10. Too much helium minerals
11. Too much C-14 in geological strata
12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
13. Agriculture is too recent.
14. History is too short.

I won't take the time to address all of these (unless others get interested ). I will note that ICR is not known for its high standards of scholarship. In fact, most of the references given in the article cited by O-O are creationist (though certainly not all) and, in my view, suffer from the same inability to look at things objectively.

With regards to the winding dilemma, here is some discussion from another forum. Humphries does not seem to be aware of the most recent data (data subsequent to 1989). Here is an excert.

CobraA1June 30th 2003, 02:26 AM
OK, some thoughts . . .


I tried googling "winding-up dilemma,"


My final google was "rotation curve milky way winding dilemma"
. . . and not a one article from Humphreys appeared . . .

You just gotta know how to use search engines properly :teeth:.

A few points: Note, after the first 10,000 light-years, the rotation curve of the Milky Way is relatively flat. Apparently this is what causes the "winding dilemma".

Note also: We're talking two types of velocity here, and Humphreys, along with a lot of other people, failed to clarify.

1. Regular velocity - distance/time
2. Rotational velocity - angle/time

Note that the graph presented by Lobstrocity are in km/s, not degrees/sec, so would be Regular velocity.

Note that with a flat regular velocity curve, the rotational velocity is much greater on the inside, due to the smaller distance that the star has to travel to complete an orbit. A star on the inside will therefore make several revolutions around the galaxy center when a star on the outside makes one. This is what causes the winding.

Note that both of my references propose an alternate explanation of the spirals, so that the dilemma can be avoided. But it does appear that Humphreys knew what he was talking about better than we thought. He apparently didn't know about the density waves theory at the time.

References:
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/ast123H/lectures/lec13.html
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~rth/Galaxies/galaxies.pdf

ALso, here is a short comment from Tim Thompson at talk origins. Perhaps we could look more into the density wave theory. At any rate, Humphries seems to be well off base here.


I also found explanations for the winding dilemma
here and here. The second gives a description of the density wave theory.

The theology web discussion also touches on the salt in the oceans and the magnetic field items as well. The salt issue is evidently an old objection going back to Henry Morris, and doesn't seem to hold much water (salty or not )

With regards to 3, Humphries dismisses the existence of the supposed "Ooort cloud" as a source for comets. My understanding is the existence of the Oort cloud has been established. It even is referenced in a college algebra textbook that I used a couple of years ago.

WIth regards to the supernova, Humphries claims supernovas occur in our galaxy about every 25 years, and that once they occur they should be visible for millions of year. Upon googling "How often do supernova occur", I found
this site giving an estimate of about every 100 years. The author writes

Although many supernovae have been seen in nearby galaxies, supernova explosions are relatively rare events in our own Galaxy, happening once a century or so on average. The last nearby supernova explosion occurred in 1680, It was thought to be just a normal star at the time, but it caused a discrepancy in the observer's star catalogue which historians finally resolved 300 years later, after the supernova remnant (Cassiopeia A) was discovered and its age estimated. Before 1680, the two most recent supernova explosions were observed by the great astronomers Tycho and Kepler in 1572 and 1604 respectively.

It is also worth noting that the 1572 nova was only visible to Tycho (obviously using just the naked eye) for only a few months.

This site concurs with the once per century estimate, and notes the dates of historically observed supernova.

I also found this explanation of why we do not typically see all of the supernova that are there.

Humphries seems to be underestimating both the average time between supernova and the number of supernova present.

It is worth noting that even if Humphries were correct, some of these items still give ages in the many millions of years, and so refute a young earth scenario.

Item 7, about strata being too tightly bent, was discussed in our own forums plate techtonics section. Rock has been observed to bend, for example in marble benches, even over the space of a few hundred years.

With regards to 8, Humphries writes

DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older

Can anyone verify this? I have never heard this claim. Also, Humphries seems to allude to the 'soft-tissue' issue that has been discussed on Otseng's thread related to the recent T-Rex find.

As far as the last 3 items, here they are, minus the graphics.

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

13. Agriculture is too recent.
The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31




14. History is too short.
According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.

I think the best that can be said for these is that they are very subjective. There is really no evidence here at all.

Back to the original article, here is a short excerpt.

Geologic time is divided up into periods, beginning with the Precambrian, followed by the Cambrian and a number of others, leading up to the present. Some fossils are found in Precambrian rocks, but most of them are found in Cambrian and later periods. We can assume that the Precambrian rocks already existed when life began, and so the ages of the Precambrian rocks are not necessarily related to the question of how long life has existed on earth.

On the one hand, the author acknowledges that fossils are found in Precambrian rocks, but on the other, says we should assume these rocks already existed when life began!

An article showing this level of logic is supposed to refute the entire science of radiomatric dating??

Throughout the article the author uses phrases like "I doubt it," "I question that," "I don't see how," "it could be that," or "I suspect not" but without offering any substantal reason, other than the overall reason for trying to show the YEC chronology must be correct because that is what a literal interpretation of the Bible says.

The best that can be said for the attempts at making substantive objections is that, even if some of the objections were valid, this would only mean that there would be some variability in the accuracy of the measurements due to the phenomenon discussed (eg. minerals leaching into or out of the rock during the decay process, etc.). The article asks us to leap from the contention that "errors in dating occur" to the conclusion "errors are so rampant that the entire enterprise in unreliable." This is like saying that since the criminal justice system occasionally convicts an innocent person, we should release all the inmates.

[Jose]

Thanks, micatala, for taking the time to go over these things. It's a pretty embarrassing list, really. "History is too short"? It's an odd approach that's used in this kind of list-making. Basically, the author presents a bunch of ideas, and concludes that they disprove the last 150 years' worth of science. The fact that the ideas have been analyzed carefully, or that some of them are basically "I don't understand it myself," seems not to enter into the author's mind.

What puzzles me is that these same ideas keep re-surfacing. In science, once we've shown an idea to be in error, we stop using it. But here, someone's out there telling people that these ancient, debunked notions are some kind of newly-discovered secrets that scientists don't want anyone to know about. It would be rather like me saying that the bible is proven wrong because the gods live on Mt. Olympus.

In any event, none of it (or the original link) say anything about radiometric dating beyond the fact that it's always possible to make mistakes. You tend to make fewer mistakes when you know what you're doing, when there are multiple replicates of each measurement, when there are alternate methods that corroborate the results, and when there are lots and lots of competitors working on the same issues.

I guess the problem is that, if you accept Archbishop Ussher's chronology as the only possible truth, then you have to grasp at anything to keep convincing yourself that scientists are dodobrains. (Which reminds me that my son told me recently to watch Kinsey, because he's portrayed as "even geekier than you, dad!")

[richGUY2112]

I just wanted to add that as far as I have heard, if carbon dating was not a valid science then nuclear power plants and bombs would spontaniously explode as they rely on it for their containment.

[Chrismyth]

This "debate" over the accuracy of dating is an old and tired one.
You rely on, trust and accept the accuracy of all sorts of measurement far more bizarre and unbelievable than this on a daily basis. How about measuring the mass of an atom? It involves more complex measuring equipment and relies more heavily on abstract mathematics and physics. Do you question the accuracy of these and other measurements that you don't understand?
Only when science provides a measurement that does not square with closely held myths do Creationists object.
Creationists have a bad habit of invoking "science" when it suits their argument but then abandoning it - more accurately bashing it - when it does not.
It is sad. There is so much brainpower, so much potential for creativity and human advancement that is wasted when otherwise bright people spend their days desperately hunting for any twig to prop up a childish story of a flood and a wooden barge overloaded with animals. And the story is not even particularily compelling or well written. Why not embrace alien obduction and animal mutilation stories? They are just as compelling and there is more "scientific" evidence they occured.