Thanks for your comments. Radionucleotide dating, whatever radionucleotides are being used is inherently based on assumptions. If any of the assumptions do not hold up, the method is totally useless.
Assumption #1: That the ratio of the 2 isotopes is the same in the past as it is in the present. In Carbon Dating for instance - the ratio of C14 to C12 is assumed to be the same today as it was thousands of years ago. Well, we can not categorically say that for sure. New C14 is constantly being created by various natural processes present in our Earth. How can we be confident that we totally understand those processes and build a dating method based on that. To me it's tenuous at best. If our assumption of initial C14/C12 ratio is wrong, Carbon Dating is useless as a dating technique. The same criticism holds true for polonium dating and others. Assumption #2: That the rate of radionucleotide decay is constant. I think is is safe to say at our present knowledge that this may not be true. There is quite compelling evidence that this is not true. Assumption #3: That there is no processes that may preferentially add one isotope over another. Like I said, there are many natural processes that add C14 preferentially over C12. This plays havoc on our instruments and produces inherently unreliable results. How else could one lab produce a date of 300,000+ years while another working on the same sample produce a date of 100,000+ years. We say that we should throw away the outliers and take the mean. But isn't it true that an outlier with an error this big is already reason enough to suspect the technique? Assumption #4: That the object being dated has not been contaminated in the course of natural human activity. For instance, the leather in the shoe has not be soaked in natural oils that would skew its C14/C12 ratio. This assumption is doubtful at best especially for the old objects we are trying to date. Assumption #5: That we understand the processes that we use as a baseline to calibrate radionucleotide dating techniques. You illustrate my point quite well below in your argument. You say the Carbon dating has been calibrated from tree rings for instance. But do we totally understand how tree rings are formed. For instance, it has been documented that trees do not form rings under certain conditions. Can we be assured that we totally understand the process of tree ring formation? Assumption #6: That the accuracy of the radionucleotide measurement hold well over several halflifes of the radionucleotide in question. To illustrate, Carbon dating is only reliable over 2 halflifes - that means around 10,000 years. After 2 halflifes, the amounts of isotopes become very unreliable to measure. Why is it then that carbon dating is used to establish ages of 100,000 years or more? These and the preponderance of widely varying actual results speak for themselves. Radionucleotide dating is highly unreliable. To establish a theory based on these techniques is building a house of cards Jojo ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 3:30 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:a new guest editorial by AXIL On 16/08/2014 12:11 AM, Jojo Iznart wrote: ...It is the inherent unreliability and irreproducibility of the methods themselves that is causing a lot of controversy. I don't know why you think radio-nucleotide dating is unreliable (unless you only listen to the YECs!). Take a look at figure 1 in the IntCal13 publication (and the rest if you are interested). You should appreciate that this is a *calibration* curve - ie the date is not determined from the C14 ratio, but the date is determined by *independent* means (ie counting tree rings, counting varves, measuring distance and assuming constant growth rate, etc). This is then plotted against the age obtained by blind use of C14 decay assuming an initial percentage at the current value. Don't you think it is remarkable that all those thousands of measurements by so many different methods all agree so well that we can *calibrate* the C14 ratio vs age from them! Would you rather base your world view on one or two outlier points, or on the overwhelming trend of millions of data points that all fit and are consistent with each other? The standard approach of science is to trust the vast body of data that agrees with itself and toss out the few outliers that cannot be fitted in because something must have been wrong with the assumptions or measurement in those cases. Egregious examples like a piece of leather from a shoe made in the 1800's dating to 600,000 years ago; I wonder if you could provide a reference to this case as it sounds rather interesting. It is easy to see how contamination can give a young age for an old sample, but difficult to see what process can produce the opposite effect! (The person who's shoe it was didn't happen to be abducted by a UFO by any chance did they?!) really are the reasons why radionucleotide dating techniques can not trusted. I am not opposed to radionecleotide dating techniques because I am religious. Au contraire, I am opposed to it because it is so unreliable. What if you really took a good look at the bulk of the data - not just the few YEC outliers - and saw just how amazingly consistent and reliable it is. Would you still be opposed to it? I suspect you would and I suspect the reason would be one akin to love. But if you love the truth above all else then you should have courage to follow even when she would lead you out of your comfort zone!
