Hi JohnZ,
Thanks for your always intelligent and considered responses.
“It does not address the data. Generalizations such as this appear to me to be a special pleading.”
This is rather the point, it does address the data; I pointed out the fact that the generality of data in the field yields consistent results and that to state otherwise is to level an accusation that you seem unwilling to do more than insinuate. It then addresses the fact that when creationists do not do the work, they preferentially share and present only data that is problematic instead of being representative. When they do have a hand in doing the work (by locating and sending the samples), I doubt fraud, but it seems that they did to take the proper care to avoid contamination, that they did not select appropriate samples from datable geologic contexts and that there appear to be a number of procedural errors, all of this according to experts who have reviewed their results from the outside. Since contamination is such an issue in this field, since there is reason to believe that it may especially be the case with their results and since their results do not seem to match what is generally found to be the case by geologists, then yes, I really do think that their findings can be dismissed without any discussion of bias or fraud. As for the first case, where they were not involved in the work at all; the preferential collection and presentation of only the discrepant data, even when outdated (prior to improved lab techniques and identified problems with the method), is definitely to be attributed to bias, and if you’d like me to put a name on it, I will call it pious fraud, only rendered pious by the fact that they only avoid outright lying in the sense that they are not inventing the data whole-cloth (though selecting the data is not qualitatively better from my point of view). Don’t ask me to psychoanalyze why anyone would preferentially collect data in such a doubtful way, I don’t know.
“When radiometric dating is used, why do the forms for samples submitted ask how old the submission is expected to be? Why is that necessary?”
I don’t strictly know, and I’ve never seen such forms, but I would assume that the rather obvious solution to this mystery is that it aids them in their selection of which methods are more appropriate (one’s that are dependent on the appropriate half-lives in order to obtain results within an optimal detection range) so that they don’t waste enormous amounts of money producing wildly inconsistent data due to the use of a method that is completely inapplicable – like oh I don’t know, using carbon dating for ancient coal deposits. But that seemingly reasonable suggestion aside, why don’t we come out and say the alternative? You don’t seem to want to be up front with the suggestion of fraud, but isn’t this the alternative being suggested? Are you not suggesting that this form aids the lab by helping them to select the data, dismissing anything that doesn’t seem to fit the expected time range? Sorry, but in the scientific world, this is called fraud, and it doesn’t make it something else just because you managed to avoid using the word.
“Why can we say one method will work in a given situation and not another?”
There are many resources that discuss why one method is more appropriate than another given different samples and why some samples work where others don’t, so this doesn’t need to remain such a mystery. In looking into it, you will notice that the reasoning is more in this category: “…because based on the identification of such and such a feature in the geologic context, it can be ascertained that the rock has been re-heated since formation, which would therefore render the dates incorrect/introduce contamination…” than in this category: “…because it was found that this method tends to yield results that are always very old, and since we think that the rocks must be very old, it must be the right one to use…” Again, please look into this, as you seem to be insinuating something that does not match how the scientists actually address such issues. I am always amazed at the degree of duplicity that some people feel comfortable attributing to scientists, and I’m afraid that it always makes me jump to the conclusion that they don’t actually know any or that, at a minimum, they don’t have any sense for how the ones that they do know practice their trade. I am sorry if I am mistaken in such assumptions and I really shouldn’t be so quick to make such judgments.
“Why does not the data itself explain whether the method has worked or not?”
Data never exactly explains itself; you always need controls, you always need to check for contamination, you generally need to consider statistical significance and you always need to take into account surprising results, all the while considering that surprising results, when relatively infrequent and not displaying a particular pattern, often have fairly prosaic explanations (like contamination). Finally, you need a theoretical framework (as we have with rates of radioactive decay and the time that this represents). The old “stop muzzling the data” routine tends to assume that data speaks into some kind of a vacuum, and that we need to be some sort of tabula rasa in order to approach it honestly; but that ain’t science I’m afraid.
“In the example I gave, the rock was submitted in an unbiased manner, with no presumption of age.”
Unless you are suggesting that samples are submitted in the geological community in a biased manner (which seems to be the insinuation), this is immaterial. If creationists interpret a failure to identify the geologic context of the sample and a failure to provide information that will allow the lab to use appropriate techniques during analysis as some kind of lack of bias instead of interpreting it as criminal negligence, then I can only say that they are excellent salesmen, not excellent scientists. Frankly, you need to presume age in order to select the most appropriate methods and you need a good idea of context in order to assess contamination issues or appropriateness of the sample (some samples, for known reasons, will not work for dating techniques; you’ve already helped me to name some). If they assumed no age (doubtful) but failed to use appropriate radiometric methods, failed to account for geologic context and failed to follow appropriate procedures, or any one of the above; then weird results are quite normal. Fraud or conspiracy don’t come into it. Failure to follow appropriate procedures (including the questionnaires of which you are so suspicious and resulting choices on how to handle the samples) is quite a reliable way of gaining the hoped for result; extremely bad data. If we leave fraud out of it, I have the choice of trusting the vast majority of scientists, who have systematically and persistently identified and controlled for methodological problems over the last 50 years, or a small group of individuals, not peer reviewed by their critical colleagues, who have failed to appropriately identify samples or geologic context to the labs doing the testing, while produced extremely inconsistent results (suspiciously having no motivation at all to actually produces consistent results, whether or not this had any impact, conscious or subconscious, on their approach) that don’t match what is being seen in the rest of the field, and whose work has been seriously lambasted for following inappropriate procedures. Do you honestly blame me, coming from this point of view, for refusing to rewrite my entire perspective based on this? I obviously information with a far better pedigree to even begin reconsidering.
“I have heard a quote (or read one) of one scientist saying that if C14 results corroborate their assumptions they use the “dates”, if they don’t, then they discard the results. I am not saying this is conspiracy, but of course, he is being careful and conscientious to use dates that make sense to him…”
Please stop saying that you are not saying this is a conspiracy; if everyone in the scientific field is routinely following a profoundly biased and dishonest procedure (which would have to be the case for your assertions to be true), while routinely failing to disclose the actual representative data, then it is to be called what it is, a conspiracy. It’s irrelevant whether or not you like using the word. If it is true that there is a scientist that is routinely selecting data based on assumed age (as opposed to selecting the method based on the presumed age), then (a) the creationists must have loved his/her line and quoted it to the ends of the earth and (b) he/she is obviously being dishonest and should be called out by colleagues. I have no doubt that there is such a being as a dishonest geologist, and I’m glad we can agree on the existence of such a person as being a significant possibility.
In your final few paragraphs, are you are saying that for any method to be considered reliable, it needs to be checked against something that is datable and reliable within the last 200,000 years (like ice cores, I suppose)? You can probably get your wish for some dating methods if you look into it. So what’s the subtext here; is it that if we fail to check this for some methods (which we must for methods that have half lives measuring in many millions of years), there may have been some fundamental change in nuclear physics prior to that point, causing fundamentally different decay rates and patterns, and for some reason not affecting the chemistry that makes life possible? Yes, this is always possible, but it isn’t always so easy and inconsequential to mess with nuclear physics as you might think (chemistry is rather sensitive to such meddling), and given that the different methods, when appropriately applied, seem to give consistent results, this change would have to affect all isotopes in a very special way, multiplying their result to the same extent, which does not seem to be the case for any known or even imagined factor. Whatever is causing this change in rates would have to be of a very odd character to produce exactly the effect you are looking for. I will suggest, as I did with Dcscccc, that maybe this is where we can look to miracles to accomplish the desired outcome and I simply have no other helpful suggestions.
For your C14 point, it is well know that there are multiple other sources of C14 in play that seem to raise the background in many samples, including bacterial/fungal sources that are far more extensive than previously thought and the de novo introduction of C14 by radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium isotope series that is naturally found in rocks. I think you need to take for granted that scientists are critical enough that when they see serious and systematic discrepancies, they take the trouble to look into them in a serious and systematic way (and that they may have an answer that the creationist sources neglected to trumpet). You once again give the impression that they simply ignore it for convenience sake and I am again amazed that you are so obviously comfortable with assuming this. Please try the benefit of the doubt and see what they have to say for themselves (unfiltered by creationist sources); this is really the best and most sincere way of approaching such an issue. Perhaps you did this, but you certainly give no intimation that you are aware of any scientific explanation for such results.