incorygible
Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006
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Unsurprisingly, Dave takes a beautiful example of the scientific process in action (warts and all), perverts it beyond recognition through juvenile rhetoric and bluster, then presents its progressive self-correction as inferior to his rigid dogma. Is anyone really convinced?
Not bloody likely, but on the off chance, consider the following:
1. The volcanic ash (tuff) in question contains volcanic sediments of several different ages. This makes it particularly difficult to date via RM. Dave, imagine I showed you a picture of my apartment and asked you to estimate when it was taken. If you went by the Victorian writing desk, you'd be off by more than a century. The dresser would get you closer, but still off by more than fifty years. The hideous panelling in one room might lead you to suspect the '70s. But no, you're a smart guy, right? You'd realize the broad range of dates possible in apartment furniture, and you'd look for the most recent item in the room that you could ascribe a date to. That LCD monitor is a good candidate -- we're probably talking within the last two years or so. But wait. That couch looks strikingly like IKEA's new line from the Spring of this year, which would date the photo from a few months ago. Success. Except...wait, look closer...the couch is actually reupholstered, which wrecks our last data point. Best go back to the LCD estimate. This is analogous to the tuff dating -- researchers were looking for an accurate date for the most juvenile sediments.
2. Given the difficulty in dating the tuff, which is a mundane deposit in a rather unremarkable corner of Africa, why did geologists bother? Could it be that it was really, really important that we accurately dated KNM-ER 1470? Might it be that we really wanted to know the truth concerning how old that hominid fossil was? Why would us fairy-tale tellers be so concerned with that? After all, we're just making this shit up right? And we already knew what its age HAD to be, didn't we? Think about it, Dave.
3. The flury of controversy surrounding KNM-ER 1470 (not because it ruined any fairy tale, but because the incoming dates conflicted with other established data) spawned dozens of scientific papers examining the various dates provided, comparing them against other relevant observations (and no, Davey, the "rate of favorable mutations" in the hominid line never entered into it), and, when discrepancies were found, tracking down the source of these discordant results. This search uncovered mis-calibrated balances, contamination with other materials (exact sources identified), and analytical errors that needed to be corrected. Now, Dave will have you believe that, if you think you've discovered something new about the world, but if, after checking your results against what is already known about the world and finding them in conflict, you immediately look for what you might have gotten wrong, is a sign of weakness. This is why he never does anything of the sort. The idea that one result against a million established contrary observations strongly suggests that the single result is anomalous would obviously make Dave's worldview explode, so he takes the exact opposite strategy (just read through the thread). Also note that if errors in the tuff dating could not be readily identified, the controversy would probably still be continuing. Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
4. Scientists are human. There were personalities involved here, brewing the tempest in the teapot, as there always are (look at the Pluto debacle going on now).
5. Even the most recent proposed date Davey cites for the tuff is 30,000% older than the thousands of years Dave needs it to be. Kinda puts Dave's 30-40% in perspective, eh?
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