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Another carbon dating question vs. Creationists

bignickel

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bignickel
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Years ago I attended a panel at a scifi/fantasy convention: a panel on 'darwin was wrong' if you can believe that.

Anyways, one of the panel members posited this, in regards to carbon dating procedures:

1. The archeologist goes to the carbon dater with the fossil.

2. The dater runs the test, and then presents the results ot the archeologist: 50 thousand years old, 100 thousand years old, 150 thousand years old, 200 thousand years old.

3. He then asks the archeologist: "In what strata did you find the fossil (or, more to the point: "how old do you think the fossil is")?"

4. The archeologist says: in such and such a strata (or "about 100 thousand years old or so").

5. The dater says: "The test has determined that it's 100 thousand years old."


NOW: This seems very doubtful to me. I was so thrown on it that I had no idea on how challenge him on it.

What exactly is he getting confused here? Did he really badly mangle some explaination given to him. Or is he just plain wrong?
 
This is an old canard: carbon-dating is calibrated by fossils, fossils are dated with carbon-dating.

In reality, there are other methods of calibrating dating methods. As usual, there is lots of good stuff at Talk.Origins
 
Such a thing might have happened in some case, but they would both be in for a spanking in peer review.

The normal procedure would be for the paleontologer to state his dating based on strata in his report and submit a copy of the report from the C14 dating. The carbon dating would be made by an independent lab, with no communication except the delivery od the sample and the receipt of a report.

If the datings did not match (within acceptable margin), the reporting paleontologist would have some explaining to do in his conclusion.

Hans
 
JamesM, your site suggestion of talxorigins was the exact right place to go.

I'm sure I've gone thru parts of that site before: I must have missed the 'circularity' link in the one article.

The paneler obviously mangled the circularity argument: but even worse, he mis-represented and gave false information how a scientist performs a test, in order to bolster his argument (or lack of one).

You should have seen the UFO panel the next year: one of the panelists was dressed as a Klingon. :D
 
bignickel said:

1. The archeologist goes to the carbon dater with the fossil.

2. The dater runs the test, and then presents the results ot the archeologist: 50 thousand years old, 100 thousand years old, 150 thousand years old, 200 thousand years old.

3. He then asks the archeologist: "In what strata did you find the fossil (or, more to the point: "how old do you think the fossil is")?"

4. The archeologist says: in such and such a strata (or "about 100 thousand years old or so").

5. The dater says: "The test has determined that it's 100 thousand years old."
Click to expand...

First off, if they're carbon dating something and getting results over 50 thousand years old, then they need to consider using a different dating method. Carbon dating is generally only reliable for things less than 50,000 years old.

Second, if you date something 4 times and get 4 dates that are that far apart, then you seriously need to recheck everything. If the dating is that inconsistent, something is definitely wrong. No serious scientist would accept any of those 4 dates.
 
Well, in fairness to the paneler (although he doesn't deserve it), I made the numbers up on the spot that I used in my post.

The point that he was making was that the tester gives 4 wide apart dates, and then asks for the fossil finder to pick one. In view of what you posted, he may have said 10000, 14000, 18000, and 22000 years. But then again, maybe he didn't; I can't remember the dates he gave.
 
The funniest yet saddest irony of the "dating game" played by the Creationists is that the ages and the dates associated with them were generally assigned prior to the development of isocron dating methods - by geologists who by and large were Creationists, albiet ones that would be referred to as old-Earthers now.
 
What in the heck would an archeologist be doing with a fossil anyway? And why carbon dating alone? for recent objects thee's plenty of other methods, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't thermolumenscence (spulling mallus est, scio) work as a dating method? I remember something about charges building up at the boundries of fracture lines, and then heating up the object to release he charges, thus creating light indicatie of the objects age.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but C14 dating isn't used for fossils, is it?

C14 dating only being useful for organic matter, and fossils being inorganic?

:confused:
 
As every measurement, isotopic dating has a margin of error. And this margin may be very big, depending on several conditions that range from contamination to the laboratory team´s skills and good practices. On a batch of assays, some will always be eliminated. The end-users of the ages may also decide to use or not some assays, based on their own criteria. I have seen some people use very bad data just because it "fits with other evidence (read "it fits my theory")". Creationists are always eager to prey upon these problems.

On a footnote, young layers may contain older fossils. Say, a 100 Ky-old layer may contain 1My-old fossils. All that is needed is the younger layer to have been generated by reworking of an older sedimentary layer. Layer 1 is eroded, and a fossil that it contained is transported and deposited in layer 2. Creationists have also used these cases as "proof" against paleontology.
 
Hand Bent Spoon said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but C14 dating isn't used for fossils, is it?

C14 dating only being useful for organic matter, and fossils being inorganic?

:confused:
Click to expand...

Completely fossilized fossils (and work with me here) are inorganic and would have lost their carbon content. Non-completely fossilized fossils, such as bones or bone fragments, charcoal from campfires and possibly coprilites that survived the passage of time could provide C14 datable materials. A mammoth with skin intact frozen in the tundra 15,000 years ago could be dated. A T-Rex turd found in an excavation could not be.

neutrino,

An archaeologist would be involved in dating materials, especially if those materials came from human related remains within the last 35,000 years. If we're talking about dating a 35,000 y.o. Sabre-Toothed tiger bone fragment, then they'd need to call in a paleontologist.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:


Completely fossilized fossils (and work with me here) are inorganic and would have lost their carbon content. .
Click to expand...
I think the word you need is ossified.
 
Well dang it, what word did I mean then? Some fossils are 'turned to stone', their molecules are replaced by minerals. That's why most dinosaur fossil bones are so heavy. If on the other hand you go to Alaska and find prehistoric bones that were preserved in the permafrost they are as light as fresh bones.
 
Petrify.

Like lots of technical work, there are things that can screw up results. If the lab technician doing C14 work drops ashes from his big cigar into the sample; if a snail shell has reacted with carbonate-bearing, percolating soil water; if the dated material had some coal mixed in, etc.

Careful sampling (keeping in mind possible sources of contamination) and good laboratory procedure can prevent screwed-up results. And, as noted in one of the posts above, multiple, far-off results indicate a problem, not a set of optional dates.
 
arcticpenguin said:
Well dang it, what word did I mean then? Some fossils are 'turned to stone', their molecules are replaced by minerals. That's why most dinosaur fossil bones are so heavy. If on the other hand you go to Alaska and find prehistoric bones that were preserved in the permafrost they are as light as fresh bones.
Click to expand...

Sort of. There are many forms of fossilization, the most extreme being total replacement fossilization. There are a few instances of replacement fossilization so good that the soft tissues were replaced with minerals, meaning that comparative anatomy of the organism in question was possible.

Dinosaur bones are not replacement fossilized. The original bone is, for the most part, still there. What has happened is that the pores in the bones have been filled with silica, and the organism was covered over quickly, sparing it from bacteria.

Considering how ubiquitous bacteria are, this doesn't happen very often.

Aha! here we go :Linky
 
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