Monday, January 25, 2010

Spinning Harder than an Electron

Remember that article I wrote on about differences in the primordial abundances of radioactive isotopes being different that what was anticipated and changing the derived age of the solar system by about two tenths of a percent? The one in which I said "Creationists are still wrong".

Yeah.

They didn't get the message.

I'm not sure what message they are getting in fact. Because their summary of the article is, well.... wrong.

Their entire summary crows about how decay rates aren't constant. They get this from.... Well, not the original paper. That's for sure. The paper was about the primordial abundances being off. The Creationists conveniently leave that out of the summary.

They even go so far as to say
These discordant dates should not be evident if the assumption of rate constancy—which underlies radioisotope dating of igneous materials and is used to support the “billions of years” age for the solar system—is accurate.
Um.

What?

The article doesn't underscore the “billions of years” age. Even with the corrections applied, it still gave an age of 4.566 billion years.

Oh snap.

The Creationists conveniently left that bit out too!

Just goes back to the old joke:
Q: How can you tell a Creationist is lying?
A: His lips are moving.

Thanks to Ted for pointing this out to me.

6 comments:

Ted said...

I notice you heroically resisted the temptation to mention the "stable isotope of lead-235" gaff. You are a man of principle.

Jon Voisey said...

That I can pass off as just a simple error. It got lost when compared to the complete rewriting of the thesis of the original paper.

Anonymous said...

There are only two times when a creationist will lie to you:
1) when his lips are moving
2) when his lips aren't moving

Unknown said...

What does the ICR care about accuracy? As long as they can pass out "biology degrees" without going through the rigorous process of getting real accreditation, that's all that matters.

Ted said...

ICR has edited their article to remove some of the more glaring mistakes and wild assertions. See
http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/category/creationism/

Marty said...

What does the ICR care about accuracy? As long as they can pass out "biology degrees" without going through the rigorous process of getting real accreditation, that's all that matters.