Asymmetrical Information

...I knew dating was not all that it purported to be...even fossils must fudge their actual age in such a highly competitive social environment.

No comment on the subject matter. Just had to say: very clever line, Megan.

This article reminded me of a witty headline from about a decade ago. A group of anthropologists and geologists had gathered -- in Alabama, I believe -- to compare notes on the estimated age of the remains of "Lucy," the mother of us all (at that time). The technical specialists had a range of dates from relatively young to relatively ancient, and the conference ended with a formal statement that there had been no agreement. A reporter got a more accurate insight -- he said that specialists thought that Lucy's age could be anywhere within the range represented at the conference (whatever that was). The title of his article was perfect: "The problems of dating an older woman."

I hope this doesn't feed fuel to the creationists who challenge dating techniques in order to prove that evolution is a fraud. I think they'll go nuts with this one.

Keith: Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, there is some rethinking to do here? And whether those you call 'creationists' go 'crazy' or not, scientists should be the ones going crazy that one (the only one???) of their own adherents to the scientific process should create such a scandal. Being a pragmatist, I look forward to watching how the anthropological community handles this matter. My son in fifth grade wrote a report citing what was effectively this man's lies, I now have to tell him the truth...

No one should presume anything about the lineage of mankind - it must be proven. Until it is, faith is every bit as true.

Of course I think there's rethinking to do here, but I suspect more will be made out of this by the 'creation science' community than is really warranted. Time will tell how it will affect the anthropological community.

The problem with the argument of faith being just as good is there far more evidence for the evolutionary process than the carbon 14 dating done by this man.

Sigh... Confirmation bias rears its ugly head, again. Dang it.

I'm a geologist by training; I just hate it when radioisotope dating is called into question because it opens SUCH a can of worms (rightly so, if the questions are valid ones, as they appear to be here). I so want science to be the realm of pure hearts and minds, and it's so not.

Until it is, faith is every bit as true.

Well, being that faith isn't a falsifiable claim there's always the "well, God just made it look that way" proposition to fall back on. What Keith is getting at is that he hopes the idiot IDers or young Earthers don't get all, "See, see radiocarbon dating is WRONG" over this guy telling lies and falsifying data. That Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens Sapiens coexisted is now conventional wisdom in the anthropological community, we'll see how long that takes to pass thanks to this bozo.

The problem with the argument of faith being just as good is there far more evidence for the evolutionary process than the carbon 14 dating done by this man.

The problem with evolution is that its most basic tenent -- the alteration of DNA in an organism to produce a succession of descendants increasingly removed, and finally completely distinct, from the parent -- cannot be shown empirically in a controlled experiment and cannot be shown conclusively from any amount of the historical evidence, of which there is plenty of fossil material to choose from.

Anything else is merely to try and make a compelling idea practical by interpreting the available evidence within the framework provided by that idea and its proponents, to wit, a paradigm. The fact that the paradigm has an extremely compelling logical structure does not make the conclusions it reaches "scientific facts" in the depoliticized definition of the word, unless you mean that many scientists believe in its truth and structure their conclusions accordingly, which is probably correct, but also philosophical.

An actual search for empirics would question the framework itself, vigorously, but since ninety percent or better of the western world's current academe is searching for natural facts within the evolutionary paradigm, countless millions of dollars and a fantastic amount of power would be called directly into question, so don't expect that.

Instead, look for every opportunity to attack the opposing argument's proponents to be exploited with ad hominem and/or invective, such as --

Well, being that faith isn't a falsifiable claim there's always the "well, God just made it look that way" proposition to fall back on. What Keith is getting at is that he hopes the idiot IDers or young Earthers don't get all, "See, see radiocarbon dating is WRONG" over this guy telling lies and falsifying data.

Bingo, it's always a joy to see those who aren't serious self-identify.

Meanwhile, a better question we all should be asking is, how is it that a man who was regarded as a dating expert since the early 1970s, but reportedly couldn't even run his own carbon-dating apparatus, was able to pull off this spectacular of a fraud? And how is it that his conclusions were only questioned when they became blatantly inconsistent with each other?

Could it be that his conclusions were structured within the boundaries of the "right" framework and were going in the "right" direction datewise? And so the vaunted self-checking mechanism of science didn't kick in until 30,000 years' worth of anthropological evolutionary data were severely corrupted, both for the scientific community which used them to create information, and for the members of the general public to whom that information was presented?

These are very serious questions, especially if anyone dares to wonder how often this might happen elsewhere in the scientific realm (be it deliberate fraud or mere accidental errors), and they won't go away just because self-appointed priests assure us that evolution is untouched and creationists are cranks and philistines.

Anony-mouse,

I'll be honest, I stopped reading your post when I got to here: "- cannot be shown empirically in a controlled experiment and cannot be shown conclusively from any amount of the historical evidence"

Why?

Because that statement is false. Evolution can too be tested in a lab! Can too! Nyah Nyah Nyah!

A couple of years ago I (mentally) devised experiemts that could prove evolution. And lo and behold, people have done similar experiments!

My experiment:
1. Start with a single microbe. (to insure identical genetics)
2. Breed a sufficent population of the microbe.
Seperate the microbes into 3 populations (Initial, Test, and Control).
3. Subject the Initial population to a deadly envirnment (too hot, cyanide, heavy metals, anti-biotics, etc). Watch them all die.
4. Starting at normal conditions, subject the Test population to ever increasing (harmfull environment), making sure not to kill off the entire population at any increment.
5. See the Test population still alive where the entire Initial population died.
6. To confirm the acquisition of new traits, subject the Control population to the same, deadly conditions. Watch them die.

Yes, experiments like this have been done, and yes, they demonstrated the acqusition of new traits (I don't remember where I read about these experiments, but I did, and I'm too lazy to find them again). While I haven't seen such an experiment done with pre and post dna sequencing, that is because the ability to rapidly sequence an organism is a new thing, and most scientists don't feel the need to prove something that is already proven. But don't worry, someon will do it eventually.

Byna, these experiments could be performed with larger creatures (say, wiener dogs), but they would take longer, and Peta would get upset.

Of course, if you want to prove evolution, you would have to go even further and obtain two new, seperate species that could not interbred, which, as far as I know, no one has ever done.

Not to say that evolution doesn't work, mind you.

It's exciting that now we will get closer to the unvarnished truth. And we've learned not to trust scientists, even German scientists, too much.

Byna:

I'll be honest, I stopped reading your post when I got to here: "- cannot be shown empirically in a controlled experiment and cannot be shown conclusively from any amount of the historical evidence"

...and thus missed about two-thirds of my actual argument because of your preconceptions about what I was arguing for. How very scientific of you. I read all of your post, FWIW.

Why?
Because that statement is false. Evolution can too be tested in a lab! Can too! Nyah Nyah Nyah!

Only because of "paradigm" thinking about evolution (you'll need to read the rest of my earlier post to get the proper context). Meaning, "evolution" is a label applied to every evidence, not a carefully-phrased hypothesis which stands or falls when the evidence is tested. Thus, "evolution" can mean population shifts (the famous peppered moths), "evolution" can mean isolating traits (like the example you cited), "evolution" can mean that birds descended from reptiles, and so forth.

Strip all these husks of wordplay away from the kernel and the basic tenent of evolution is, and remains, that the natural world arose by descending from earlier life forms. The example you cited doesn't even speak to this. You started with microbes, you ended with microbes; and you either isolated a trait by deliberately selecting for it until it was dominant in all offspring, or you may have even promoted resistance to the toxin to be developed. But (without resorting to wordplay, at least) that doesn't even come close to being empirical proof for "evolution" as such.

Yes, experiments like this have been done, and yes, they demonstrated the acqusition of new traits (I don't remember where I read about these experiments, but I did, and I'm too lazy to find them again).

Your laziness is not to your advantage. You didn't think very critically about what I said and you apparently didn't think very critically about what you had previously devised and read, but you were willing to accept one point of view over the other on the basis of what you believed to be correct. Not good.

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