[_ Old Earth _] Peer Review in Journals

[brother Paul]

Indeed it is not admitted by many but it is a fact. Many articles peer reviewed and accepted and published have later been discovered by non-members of the review committee in these fields to be full of misstatement, fudged data, and outright fraud and only upon pressure from the non-committee criticisms were papers and articles retracted.

In 2012, R Grant Steen of Medical Communications Consultants, out of Chapel Hill, NC, pointed out that “Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing.”

So in fact, cases of scientific fraud are increasing not decreasing. Allegedly there were 8 times as many fraudulent presentations discovered and retracted in 2009 than in 2006. This means that as more of these frauds are being exposed, the greater the fervency to commit more seems to be occurring. In other words, some scientists are intentionally determined to do whatever is necessary to convince, shape, and engineer, public and professional opinion that they will even lie and misrepresent data. For every one they catch (and even trying to catch them is only something new) four or five escape notice and IMO brainwash us (we believe it is sound because it is published in a Peer Reviewed Journal).

In an article from the “National Institute of Health” we receive this report (EMBO Rep. 2007 January; 8(1): 1). “Fraud in our laboratories?”, by Frank Gannon, who informs us that “With depressing regularity, the media continue to uncover cases of scientific fraud... although the scientific community regards publicized cases of fraudulent behavior as exceptional and deviant from accepted scientific standards—fraud is an inevitable component of today's research.”

So how many “finds” and “determinations” believed in today, are actually the result of these spurious interpretations, fudged statistics, and/or doctored data? How many have escaped notice and now plague the modern mind? More than have been caught I assure you. He states these people are not above disregarding and not reporting data that is contrary to their own alleged conclusion. How many or which ones can we or should we consider factual beyond a reasonable doubt?

In another article titled, “Scientific fraud and the power structure of science” (Prometheus, Vol. 10, No. 1, June 1992, pp. 83-98), author Brian Martin tells us, “One of the most common misrepresentations in scientific work is the scientific paper itself (see P. B. Medawar, 'Is the scientific paper fraudulent? Yes; it misrepresents scientific thought', Saturday Review, 1 August 1964, pp. 42-43). It sometimes presents a mythical reconstruction of what actually happened. All of what are in retrospect mistaken ideas, badly designed experiments, and incorrect calculations are omitted. The paper presents the research as if it had been carefully thought out, planned and executed according to a neat, rigorous process, for example involving testing of a hypothesis.

"The misrepresentation in the scientific paper is the most formal aspect of the misrepresentation of science as an orderly process based on a clearly defined method (see John A. Schuster and Richard R. Yeo, The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method: Historical Studies, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986).” So in effect, “No scientist publishes all the raw data…Inappropriately done (usually according to someone else's assessment), this process can be called cooking, trimming, fiddling, fudging or forging the data.”

Sadly when this occurs the story you are told, that the press goes crazy with, that textbooks may represent as established fact, are in fact hogwash but yet we believe them all unquestionably as students. Never accept or reject solely on the basis of the premise it is sound if accepted and published in Peer Reviews Journals.

Paul

 

[brother Paul]

The process has also worked in reverse where legitimate research found to question the favored theory of the pedagogues is suddenly inundated with and buried by mountains of criticisms (mostly unfounded) to discredit such discoveries.

At first, Nuclear physics researcher Robert Gentry was hailed for this amazing discovery. At first his articles were considered revolutionary to say the least and his work was being published in all the best peer reviewed Journals.

However, for those of you who are seekers of truth, who prefer to know what actually is, you can explore his discovery more fully in the actual periodicals.

Extinct Radioactivity and the Discovery of a New Pleochroic Halo, in, Nature, 1967, 213:437-490

"Fossil Alpha-Recoil Analysis of Certain Variant Radioactive Halos". Science Gentry, Robert V. (14 June 1968).

Radiohalos; some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios of unknown Alpha Radioactivity, Science, 1971, 173:727-731

Radioactive Halos in a Radiochronological Cosmological Perspective, from the 63rd annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Spectacle array of 210po halo radiocentres in biotites: a Nuclear Geophysical Enigma, Nature, 1974 252:564 – 566!

Evidence for Primordial Superheavy Elements . Physical Review Letters, 37 (1), Gentry, Robert V.; T. A. Cahill; R. G. Flocchini; N. R. Fletcher; H. C. Kaufmann; L. R. Medsker; J. W. Nelson (1976).

Time: Measured Responses, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union Gentry, R.V. 1979 , 60, 474

At first he was revered as making a great contribution worth exploring further but after his case against Cornell for unfair discriminatory actions (in violation of their own rules and regulations), the pedagogues of the Darwinian replacement myth realized what this discovery implied for them, they made a full scale effort to bombard any reference or discussion of this amazing fact with controversy.

They held back no blows and literally began a process that eventually inundated the web presentations of Gentry’s papers with hundreds of articles and criticisms of the man and his work. So if you are willing to sit and weed through 30 or 40 web pages of mostly carefully engineered propaganda you may (or may not) get to actually see his work.

I have managed to read some of them because I had a three year subscription to Science from 73 through 76 (with many other single issues) but a few years back I found it quite difficult (in fact some cannot be obtained) to buy back issues containing his papers.

Now I am not a YEC and do not agree with the personal conclusions of Gentry when asked what he thinks this means (for YEC) but I do agree with his assessment (previously agreed to by many fellows in his field) that the majority of this type of granite (planet wide) shows the previously accepted myth regarding how long it took for granite to form has successfully been refuted. Granite formed to a sold mass in a matter of minutes NOT thousands of years as molten magma cooled and settled.

Paul

 

[Barbarian]

So in fact, cases of scientific fraud are increasing not decreasing. Allegedly there were 8 times as many fraudulent presentations discovered and retracted in 2009 than in 2006.

Let's assume that your unsupported numbers are correct. (I'm sure everyone would like to see that data you're telling us about; will you show us?)

According to your source, how many cases of fraud per year, and how many scientific journal articles published per year?

It would seem, not many. Nature, for example, has erred more often rejecting controversial, but valid papers than by accepted ones that turned out to be fraudulent:
A series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön were published in Nature in the 2000–2001 period. The papers, about semiconductors, were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003 the papers were retracted by Nature. The Schön scandal was not limited to Nature. Other prominent journals such as Science and Physical Review also retracted papers by Schön.[27]


Before publishing one of its most famous discoveries, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, Nature did not send the paper out for peer review. John Maddox, Nature‍ 's editor, stated that "the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature ... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field ... could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure".[28]


An earlier error occurred when Enrico Fermi submitted his breakthrough paper on the weak interaction theory of beta decay. Nature turned down the paper because it was considered too remote from reality.[29] Fermi's paper was published by Zeitschrift für Physik in 1934,[30] and finally published by Nature 5 years later,[citation needed] after Fermi's work had been widely accepted.


When Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research initially rejected by Nature and published only after Lauterbur appealed the rejection, Nature acknowledged more of its own missteps in rejecting papers in an editorial titled "Coping with Peer Rejection":


[T]here are unarguable faux pas in our history. These include the rejection of Cerenkov radiation, Hideki Yukawa's meson, work on photosynthesis by Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel, and the initial rejection (but eventual acceptance) of Stephen Hawking's black-hole radiation.[31]

In June 1988, after nearly a year of guided scrutiny from its editors, Nature published a controversial and seemingly anomalous paper detailing Dr. Jacques Benveniste and his team's work studying human basophil degranulation in the presence of extremely dilute antibody serum.[32] In short, their paper concluded that less than a single molecule of antibody could trigger an immune response in human basophils, defying the physical law of mass action. The paper excited substantial media attention in Paris, chiefly because their research sought funding from homeopathic medicine companies. Public inquiry prompted Nature to mandate an extensive, stringent and scientifically questionable experimental replication in Benveniste's lab, through which his team's results were categorically disputed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)

Perhaps seven, with five from one researcher. Out of tens of thousands of articles. Now, you might argue that top journals will have a better record, and this is true. It's why they are so well-regarded. On the other end of the spectrum, there has been an explosion of "vanity" journals, which will publish pretty much anything if you're willing to pay.
http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/03/09/research-publisher-another-vanity-press/

More likely to have fraud? Yep. So, we can add those. Do scientists actually consider the source when they read articles? Yep. They do.

Now the worst thing that can happen to an author of a fraudulent article is to have lots of people read it and cite it. Why? Because then people start trying to reproduce it. And when that doesn't happen, the author is finished. That's usually a career-ending disaster.

Think not? Come up with one such article that has had wide influence in the field of evolutionary science. It could be a revelation for you..

This means that as more of these frauds are being exposed, the greater the fervency to commit more seems to be occurring. In other words, some scientists are intentionally determined to do whatever is necessary to convince, shape, and engineer, public and professional opinion that they will even lie and misrepresent data.

See above. You've made a bad assumption. Authors of fraudulent journal articles don't want people to read them. So what do they get out of it? A professor is expected to publish; the old "publish or perish" motto still holds true in academia. Your paper count is significant in terms of employment and in prestige. The ideal fraudulent paper, from the POV of the author, would never be used in ongoing research.

Since useful articles form a baseline from which new research is done, scientists quickly find out that the results can't be reproduced, and then it hits the fan. On the other hand, obscure and pointless fraudulent research can go unnoticed for a much longer time precisely because it has little effect on science in general.

 

[Barbarian]

Let's take a look at Gentry's work:
Extinct Radioactivity and the Discovery of a New Pleochroic Halo
R. V. GENTRY
Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Maryland.
BECAUSE of the cosmological implications of such a discovery1, considerable effort has been expended toward the detection of extinct radioactivity in crustal rocks and meteorites. An excess of fissiogenic xenon isotopes in the Fayetteville meteorite2 and the presence of excess fission tracks in the Toluca meteorite3 have in each case been considered possible evidence of spontaneous fission from the extinct nuclide plutonium-244. Although an earlier search for the neptunium series in nature failed to reveal its existence4, later results suggest that it may exist5.

No weird notions of instant granite. So no fraud here. His later claims of primordial granite fell apart when it was shown his samples came from magma that had intruded into sedimentary rock and then hardened. It goes without saying that intrusive rock by definition, is not primordial, particularly in sedimentary rock. A not-too technical explanation of the issue is here:
http://ncse.com/book/export/html/3436

I would be most pleased to see a demonstration of magma quickly forming into granite. In nature, we can watch the sudden hardening of such magma, but it forms extremely fine-grained rhyolite, not granite.

Rhyolite can be considered as the extrusive equivalent to the plutonic granite rock, and consequently, outcrops of rhyolite may bear a resemblance to granite. Due to their high content of silica and low iron and magnesium contents, rhyolite melts are highly polymerized and form highly viscous lavas. They also occur as breccias or in volcanic plugs and dikes. Rhyolites that cool too quickly to grow crystals form a natural glass or vitrophyre, also called obsidian. Slower cooling forms microscopic crystals in the lava and results in textures such as flow foliations, spherulitic, nodular, and lithophysal structures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyolite

Now your claim is most interesting, because if it could be shown that granite forms rapidly under natural conditions, there's a lot of chemistry, geology, and physics to revise. Your guys could easily do this by melting some rock of the right composition, cooling it quickly, and demonstrating the large crystals found in natural granite. I always assumed that creationists would never do this, because it would not work.

So I'm most interested to see your evidence that it has been done. Would you show us?

 

[turnorburn]

Here's a few..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21186208
http://jme.bmj.com/content/37/4/249.abstract
http://www.naturalnews.com/042087_scientific_dishonesty_retracted_papers_science_fraud.html
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/...raudsters-our-op-ed-in-todays-new-york-times/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...retractions/5sEuq6LdbZDndBIbRFBwLP/story.html

tob

 

[Barbarian]

Your first source says a bit fewer than 20 papers per year are retracted for fraud for all the journals in the PubMed database. There are about 5100 journals so indexed. So we can expect one case of fraud per year in about four journals in every thousand. As you know, the more reputable journals have lower rates of fraud.

So I'm thinking how many cases of misconduct do we see in church denominations each year? As I pointed out, most of the fraud is from pressure to publish to keep one's job. Unless the person is an idiot, he doesn't do anything that would attract attention or become widely cited, because that's when people realize the findings can't be replicated. And if they aren't reproducible, that's when he gets caught.

 

[brother Paul]

Let's assume that your unsupported numbers are correct. (I'm sure everyone would like to see that data you're telling us about; will you show us?)

According to your source, how many cases of fraud per year, and how many scientific journal articles published per year?

It would seem, not many. Nature, for example, has erred more often rejecting controversial, but valid papers than by accepted ones that turned out to be fraudulent:
A series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön were published in Nature in the 2000–2001 period. The papers, about semiconductors, were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003 the papers were retracted by Nature. The Schön scandal was not limited to Nature. Other prominent journals such as Science and Physical Review also retracted papers by Schön.[27]


Before publishing one of its most famous discoveries, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, Nature did not send the paper out for peer review. John Maddox, Nature‍ 's editor, stated that "the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature ... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field ... could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure".[28]


An earlier error occurred when Enrico Fermi submitted his breakthrough paper on the weak interaction theory of beta decay. Nature turned down the paper because it was considered too remote from reality.[29] Fermi's paper was published by Zeitschrift für Physik in 1934,[30] and finally published by Nature 5 years later,[citation needed] after Fermi's work had been widely accepted.


When Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research initially rejected by Nature and published only after Lauterbur appealed the rejection, Nature acknowledged more of its own missteps in rejecting papers in an editorial titled "Coping with Peer Rejection":


[T]here are unarguable faux pas in our history. These include the rejection of Cerenkov radiation, Hideki Yukawa's meson, work on photosynthesis by Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel, and the initial rejection (but eventual acceptance) of Stephen Hawking's black-hole radiation.[31]

In June 1988, after nearly a year of guided scrutiny from its editors, Nature published a controversial and seemingly anomalous paper detailing Dr. Jacques Benveniste and his team's work studying human basophil degranulation in the presence of extremely dilute antibody serum.[32] In short, their paper concluded that less than a single molecule of antibody could trigger an immune response in human basophils, defying the physical law of mass action. The paper excited substantial media attention in Paris, chiefly because their research sought funding from homeopathic medicine companies. Public inquiry prompted Nature to mandate an extensive, stringent and scientifically questionable experimental replication in Benveniste's lab, through which his team's results were categorically disputed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)

Perhaps seven, with five from one researcher. Out of tens of thousands of articles. Now, you might argue that top journals will have a better record, and this is true. It's why they are so well-regarded. On the other end of the spectrum, there has been an explosion of "vanity" journals, which will publish pretty much anything if you're willing to pay.
http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/03/09/research-publisher-another-vanity-press/

More likely to have fraud? Yep. So, we can add those. Do scientists actually consider the source when they read articles? Yep. They do.

Now the worst thing that can happen to an author of a fraudulent article is to have lots of people read it and cite it. Why? Because then people start trying to reproduce it. And when that doesn't happen, the author is finished. That's usually a career-ending disaster.

Think not? Come up with one such article that has had wide influence in the field of evolutionary science. It could be a revelation for you..



See above. You've made a bad assumption. Authors of fraudulent journal articles don't want people to read them. So what do they get out of it? A professor is expected to publish; the old "publish or perish" motto still holds true in academia. Your paper count is significant in terms of employment and in prestige. The ideal fraudulent paper, from the POV of the author, would never be used in ongoing research.

Since useful articles form a baseline from which new research is done, scientists quickly find out that the results can't be reproduced, and then it hits the fan. On the other hand, obscure and pointless fraudulent research can go unnoticed for a much longer time precisely because it has little effect on science in general.

Barbarian, I do appreciate your comments here and yes of course many more fine articles and experiments are validated than those which are not. But even if 20 to 40 out of 5000 get caught and 100 or more do not thats a whole lot still being utilized as support that are not actually reliable and may not be shown to be false or falsified until many years later.

Now as for other things referred to in my first post none of it came from me. I may have not used quotations in every instance but these are the sentiments of others within the scientific community (and I gave about 5 articles that explore this problem. None of the ideas are mine nor are people from say the NIH trying to oppose science (absurd conclusion bot that you reached that) nor are they angling to support the YECs.

SO your arguments would be with them not me....my part is my belief that when so much evidence is around for hanky panky (in this and so many other threads) we must question it all...

Paul

Sorry I cannot get to your next response right now as I have to help my grandson with his math....(I am sure you understand that)...

 

[Doulos Iesou]

Barbarian, I do appreciate your comments here and yes of course many more fine articles and experiments are validated than those which are not. But even if 20 to 40 out of 5000 get caught and 100 or more do not thats a whole lot still being utilized as support that are not actually reliable and may not be shown to be false or falsified until many years later.

Now as for other things referred to in my first post none of it came from me. I may have not used quotations in every instance but these are the sentiments of others within the scientific community (and I gave about 5 articles that explore this problem. None of the ideas are mine nor are people from say the NIH trying to oppose science (absurd conclusion bot that you reached that) nor are they angling to support the YECs.

SO your arguments would be with them not me....my part is my belief that when so much evidence is around for hanky panky (in this and so many other threads) we must question it all...

Paul

Sorry I cannot get to your next response right now as I have to help my grandson with his math....(I am sure you understand that)...

Uses sources from the scientific community to try and validate that the scientific community.

Me thinks you have just undermined your own premise.

 

[brother Paul]

Uses sources from the scientific community to try and validate that the scientific community.

Me thinks you have just undermined your own premise.

Me thinks not....! But as bros we can agree to disagree, do you agree or disagree? (lol)

Pablo (just cruzin)

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian, I do appreciate your comments here and yes of course many more fine articles and experiments are validated than those which are not. But even if 20 to 40 out of 5000 get caught and 100 or more do not thats a whole lot still being utilized as support that are not actually reliable and may not be shown to be false or falsified until many years later.

Two things make it more reliable than almost anything else humans do:
1. As you know, science doesn't work by endorsements, or quotes. It works by evidence. So if someone uses someone else's work in his work, he checks to make sure it's reproducible. If it doesn't work as the researcher said, then he's in trouble.

2. Most frauds seek to bury their articles, because the last thing they want is everyone citing them or testing them.

But of course, humans are no more perfect in understanding His creation than they are at understanding His word. So it fails sometimes. The point is that science is self-correcting, and the frauds (and much more common errors, according to your sources) get discovered and fixed. Scientists do get highly upset with fraud, because dishonesty is so damaging to the process.

That's actually a good thing, and helps to keep science more reliable than other human activities.

 

[brother Paul]

Let's take a look at Gentry's work:
Extinct Radioactivity and the Discovery of a New Pleochroic Halo
R. V. GENTRY
Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Maryland.
BECAUSE of the cosmological implications of such a discovery1, considerable effort has been expended toward the detection of extinct radioactivity in crustal rocks and meteorites. An excess of fissiogenic xenon isotopes in the Fayetteville meteorite2 and the presence of excess fission tracks in the Toluca meteorite3 have in each case been considered possible evidence of spontaneous fission from the extinct nuclide plutonium-244. Although an earlier search for the neptunium series in nature failed to reveal its existence4, later results suggest that it may exist5.

No weird notions of instant granite. So no fraud here. His later claims of primordial granite fell apart when it was shown his samples came from magma that had intruded into sedimentary rock and then hardened. It goes without saying that intrusive rock by definition, is not primordial, particularly in sedimentary rock. A not-too technical explanation of the issue is here:
http://ncse.com/book/export/html/3436

I would be most pleased to see a demonstration of magma quickly forming into granite. In nature, we can watch the sudden hardening of such magma, but it forms extremely fine-grained rhyolite, not granite.

Rhyolite can be considered as the extrusive equivalent to the plutonic granite rock, and consequently, outcrops of rhyolite may bear a resemblance to granite. Due to their high content of silica and low iron and magnesium contents, rhyolite melts are highly polymerized and form highly viscous lavas. They also occur as breccias or in volcanic plugs and dikes. Rhyolites that cool too quickly to grow crystals form a natural glass or vitrophyre, also called obsidian. Slower cooling forms microscopic crystals in the lava and results in textures such as flow foliations, spherulitic, nodular, and lithophysal structures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyolite

Now your claim is most interesting, because if it could be shown that granite forms rapidly under natural conditions, there's a lot of chemistry, geology, and physics to revise. Your guys could easily do this by melting some rock of the right composition, cooling it quickly, and demonstrating the large crystals found in natural granite. I always assumed that creationists would never do this, because it would not work.

So I'm most interested to see your evidence that it has been done. Would you show us?

I would be most pleased to see a demonstration of magma quickly forming into granite. In nature, we can watch the sudden hardening of such magma, but it forms extremely fine-grained rhyolite, not granite.

The first primary definition of Magma in my Websters is "molten rock" and the point being made was referring to the time it took for granite in its alleged original molten state to solidify. Even in my grandsons High School Earth Science text, which I am using because it is right here (Modern Earth Science, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2002, pg 178) we read "...the cooling of magma...below the crust produces intrusive igneous rock:" The example of such intrusive igneous rock they give (Fig. 10-4) is GRANITE. So don;t use semantics you think above the pay-grade of most viewers to imply I do not know what I am talking about. Of course rhyolite should harden more quickly it is extrusive (as you have pointed out) but that does not change the fact that radio halos are trapped in granite almost everywhere he looked. Now I am no expert (nor do I claim to be) but I am also not a dummy...

Most criticisms attempting to refute this fact were only brought up a decade or more after much of his published works and only after asserting his personal (no claim to being scientific) conclusions about these being "creation rocks" and so on. In fact one of the most cited criticisms in places I have seen is "Polonium Halos” Refuted A Critique of “Radioactive Halos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective” by Thomas A Baillieul (2010), but Wise (a creationist) is the earliest critic I found (1988). The problem here is Gentry never claimed to be a Geologist but was looking from the perspective of Nuclear Physics (his specialty)...in many of his early articles he was not even trying to say Geologists were/are incorrect only that the phenomena was present (which by chance did not fit the accepted model). As a good scientist this led to other questions, naturally...

None of his articles were retracted, or accused of intentional falsification of data, nor of fraud...his later conclusions however cost him a career...and we must not forget he has also received criticism from other creationists as well for other positions he has held based on his science. Should the man not remain intellectually honest? And don't forget the many fine scientists in many fields that found his work insightful, compelling, and well done (again I am not referring to whether or not they agree with his personal beliefs just his science).

But of course, humans are no more perfect in understanding His creation than they are at understanding His word. So it fails sometimes. The point is that science is self-correcting, and the frauds (and much more common errors, according to your sources) get discovered and fixed. Scientists do get highly upset with fraud, because dishonesty is so damaging to the process.

I agree that the better ones do...

That's actually a good thing, and helps to keep science more reliable than other human activities.

Now thats conjecture but you have a right to your opinion.

However post 2 was not meant to incite a Gentry opinion debate it was merely an example of the opposite kind of problem, that is when a valid observation was made by a person in their own field of expertise that rocked the proverbial boat of another field (which should have raised questions and excited research) it was later buried in a mountain of attacks against the man as much as his work.

Paul

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian requests:
I would be most pleased to see a demonstration of magma quickly forming into granite. In nature, we can watch the sudden hardening of such magma, but it forms extremely fine-grained rhyolite, not granite.

The first primary definition of Magma in my Websters is "molten rock"

This is why it's a bad idea to use dictionaries for scientific words. Magma is melted rock underground. Lava is extrusive melted rock.

and the point being made was referring to the time it took for granite in its alleged original molten state to solidify.

Yes. It would be simple enough to set up an experiment to show that it happens quickly. Are you telling me that there wasn't any such observation? It would settle the issue once and for all.

Even in my grandsons High School Earth Science text, which I am using because it is right here (Modern Earth Science, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2002, pg 178) we read "...the cooling of magma...below the crust produces intrusive igneous rock:" The example of such intrusive igneous rock they give (Fig. 10-4) is GRANITE.

The point is that intrusive rock cools very slowly, therefore forming visible crystals of the constituent minerals, producing granite. On the other hand, if it's quickly cooled, it forms rhyolite with very tiny crystals.

So don;t use semantics you think above the pay-grade of most viewers to imply I do not know what I am talking about.

All of these things matter, if you want to talk about how the rock forms, and what it ends up being as rock. I apologize for the necessary terminology, but it is necessary.

Of course rhyolite should harden more quickly it is extrusive (as you have pointed out) but that does not change the fact that radio halos are trapped in granite almost everywhere he looked.

Particularly where radioactive elements were in abundance, and more importantly, where the granite formed as intrusive rock, intruding into sedimentary rock (we know the sedimentary rock was there first, because there is contact metamorphism in such deposits). Again, if it was formed intruding into other rock, it cannot be primordial rock.

Now I am no expert (nor do I claim to be) but I am also not a dummy...

I'm not a geologist, either. But this isn't hard to understand. As you say, his earlier work, in which he didn't make the YE conclusions, was accepted. Only later, when he added claims that were unsupportable, did he have any problems with criticism.

Barbarian observes:
But of course, humans are no more perfect in understanding His creation than they are at understanding His word. So it fails sometimes. The point is that science is self-correcting, and the frauds (and much more common errors, according to your sources) get discovered and fixed. Scientists do get highly upset with fraud, because dishonesty is so damaging to the process.
I agree that the better ones do...

That's actually a good thing, and helps to keep science more reliable than other human activities.

Now thats conjecture but you have a right to your opinion.

It's demonstrably true. Even the numbers you submitted show that there is remarkably little fraud in scientific literature.

However post 2 was not meant to incite a Gentry opinion debate it was merely an example of the opposite kind of problem, that is when a valid observation was made by a person in their own field of expertise that rocked the proverbial boat of another field (which should have raised questions and excited research) it was later buried in a mountain of attacks against the man as much as his work.

It's just a fact. Granted, Gentry isn't a geologist, and can be excused for not knowing it, but it is impossible that igneous rock, intruding into a pre-existing sedimentary formation, can be primordial.

Nothing can change that.

 

[brother Paul]

the first primary definition of Magma in my Websters is "molten rock"

This is why it's a bad idea to use dictionaries for scientific words. Magma is melted rock underground. Lava is extrusive melted rock.

I also provided my GSs textbook which demonstrated the same meaning…are you saying the inner circles in a particular field change the meaning or have the correct meaning and everyone else (like people whose field is word definitions) are incorrect? Is it re-defined to support the popular view…

The Oxford defines the word as “Hot fluid or semifluid material below or within the earth’s crust from which lava and other igneousrock is formed by cooling.” But they are incorrect? Hardly!

and the point being made was referring to the time it took for granite in its alleged original molten state to solidify.

Yes. It would be simple enough to set up an experiment to show that it happens quickly. Are you telling me that there wasn't any such observation? It would settle the issue once and for all.

Come on…that’s a set up…you KNOW it would be no such thing as “simple enough”….no one can reproduce the conditions (in fact scientists do not even remotely know the conditions) at such a time (just look at the different intelligently designed conditions of Miller/Urey verses Fox) or has any idea as to what they were really like (if such conditions even really existed which is also actually NOT known but assumed)

If we took molten granite today in a lab and cooled it (even fairly rapidly) all the halos would burn out...

Even in my grandsons High School Earth Science text, which I am using because it is right here (Modern Earth Science, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2002, pg 178) we read "...the cooling of magma...below the crust produces intrusive igneous rock:" The example of such intrusive igneous rock they give (Fig. 10-4) is GRANITE.

The point is that intrusive rock cools very slowly, therefore forming visible crystals of the constituent minerals, producing granite. On the other hand, if it's quickly cooled, it forms rhyolite with very tiny crystals.

Again with the semantic mumbo jumbo to fool the less informed….it just means (basically) that one is cooled below and the other above…

So a) what you are saying is that it is believed and accepted that under TODAY’s conditions granite solidifies very slowly (but no one has actually observed the 1000 or more year process). And I knew this is the explanation you would give because it is accepted view….we do however see granite magmas in existence underneath the Coso Range in California (Wood, C. A., and Kienle, J., 1990, Volcanoes of North America: United States and Canada: Cambridge University Press, 364 p., p. 197-199.) but the formation/solidification process is admittedly no observed and an honest scientist should require better evidence than personal belief (a point you have made on occasion).

And b) the way you worded this you imply the same materials are an either/or (which is not correct)

Again, if it was formed intruding into other rock, it cannot be primordial rock.

Again this is semantics, by this term he is referring to the original solidification of granite (the long 1,000 or more years explanation cannot explain why the halos did not burn out before the final solidification took place)…since the half-life of these halos is 164 milliseconds the final solidification (from flare up to burn out) would still have had to occur very rapidly.

I'm not a geologist, either. But this isn't hard to understand. As you say, his earlier work, in which he didn't make the YE conclusions, was accepted. Only later, when he added claims that were unsupportable, did he have any problems with criticism.

This is true. As soon as he began comparing his findings with the general account we would deduce from Genesis if we were YECs that IS when his problems began…but again his work was solid (no pun intended) and his opinion (interpretation of the data) is his personal right in a society where one can have alternate opinions (though not in a closed system where only one view is accepted)…

it is impossible that igneous rock, intruding into a pre-existing sedimentary formation, can be primordial.

Yes if we are talking about TODAY under these conditions (though this still does not con-firm (excuse the pseudo-pun) the rate of solidification. In fact they even could vary over time under varying conditions (of that I am sure you could agree). Even so I do not see Gentry offering "igneous rock" (which already would be solidified) intruding as evidence of what he found to be the case.

Anyway…in an examination of forensics in any situation if some of the evidence is or has surely been tainted, usually none of it will be “relied on” so why should we not also apply this same “accepted principle” here (and believe me I do not always think that what is “accepted” is always correct, otherwise we would still be viewing the universe in Newtonian Mechanics)…but generally in reviewing evidences, if we cannot be sure some is not tainted, when we know some has been, then we SHOULD question it all (in fact IMO we are obligated to).

 

[Barbarian]

the first primary definition of Magma in my Websters is "molten rock"

Barbarian observes:
This is why it's a bad idea to use dictionaries for scientific words. Magma is melted rock underground. Lava is extrusive melted rock.

I also provided my GSs textbook which demonstrated the same meaning…are you saying the inner circles in a particular field change the meaning or have the correct meaning and everyone else (like people whose field is word definitions) are incorrect? Is it re-defined to support the popular view…

Those were the definitions used in geology when I was an undergraduate in the 1960s. (Barbarian checks)
Magma is the molten material beneath the Earth’s crust. It usually collects in a magma chamber beneath a volcano, and can then be injected into cracks in rocks or issue out of volcanoes in eruptions. The temperature of magma ranges between 700 C and 1300 C.
When it reaches the surface and comes out of a volcano, magma becomes lava.
http://www.universetoday.com/27908/what-is-the-difference-between-lava-and-magma/

The Oxford defines the word as “Hot fluid or semifluid material below or within the earth’s crust from which lava and other igneousrock is formed by cooling.” But they are incorrect? Hardly!

See above. Dictionaries are a bad place to look for scientific terms.

and the point being made was referring to the time it took for granite in its alleged original molten state to solidify.

Yes. It would be simple enough to set up an experiment to show that it happens quickly. Are you telling me that there wasn't any such observation? It would settle the issue once and for all.

Come on…that’s a set up…you KNOW it would be no such thing as “simple enough”….no one can reproduce the conditions (in fact scientists do not even remotely know the conditions) at such a time (just look at the different intelligently designed conditions of Miller/Urey verses Fox) or has any idea as to what they were really like (if such conditions even really existed which is also actually NOT known but assumed)

If we took molten granite today in a lab and cooled it (even fairly rapidly) all the halos would burn out...

But we could test the belief that granite can form quickly. And that's a key part of Gentry's religious claim.

Barbarian observes:
The point is that intrusive rock cools very slowly, therefore forming visible crystals of the constituent minerals, producing granite. On the other hand, if it's quickly cooled, it forms rhyolite with very tiny crystals.

Again with the semantic mumbo jumbo to fool the less informed….it just means (basically) that one is cooled below and the other above…

No. There's no technical terminology at all, there. Here's granite next to rhyolite:

,

So a) what you are saying is that it is believed and accepted that under TODAY’s conditions granite solidifies very slowly (but no one has actually observed the 1000 or more year process).

We've never seen a giant redwood grow from a seed, either. I don't see the point. What we do have are the physical and chemical laws that determine how crystals form as rock cools. And granite can't be formed instantly, as Gentry suggests. More to the point, if it's formed as an intrusion into sedimentary rock, there's no way it can be primordial, by definition.

And I knew this is the explanation you would give because it is accepted view….we do however see granite magmas in existence

I've already told you that they exist undeground.

but the formation/solidification process is admittedly no observed and an honest scientist should require better evidence than personal belief (a point you have made on occasion).

Like the redwoods. So how do we know they came from seeds?

And b) the way you worded this you imply the same materials are an either/or (which is not correct)

You can have coarse- rhyolite and you can have fine-grained granite. But they are still different, with the coarse-grained rhyolite being finer in structure than fine-grained granite. Occasionally, we'll see magma that has cooled somewhat in a magma chamber, sufficiently to have some minerals crystallize out, and then erupt as lava, and the rest cool quickly. This is, for example, what happened to the dacite in the lava dome at Mt. St. Helens. The dacite tests out at very ancient, even though erupted only decades ago, because of the xenocrysts that formed much earlier, and therefore test accordingly old.

Barbarian observes:
Again, if it was formed intruding into other rock, it cannot be primordial rock.

Again this is semantics

It's plain English. His argument was that the granite had formed at creation, and was original rock. Not possible, since it obviously formed later than the sedimentary rock into which it intruded.

by this term he is referring to the original solidification of granite (the long 1,000 or more years explanation cannot explain why the halos did not burn out before the final solidification took place)…since the half-life of these halos is 164 milliseconds the final solidification (from flare up to burn out) would still have had to occur very rapidly.

So there would have to be another source of radiation in the rocks to account for those halos, since we already know he was wrong about the granite being primordial.

As soon as he began comparing his findings with the general account we would deduce from Genesis if we were YECs that IS when his problems began…

As you see, his assumptions are wrong. It's not possible for that granite to be primordial.

Yes if we are talking about TODAY under these conditions

If you hypothesize other conditions, it's incumbent on you to show that they apply. What do you have?

(though this still does not con-firm (excuse the pseudo-pun) the rate of solidification. In fact they even could vary over time under varying conditions (of that I am sure you could agree).

See above. For example, very slow cooling produces granite, and rapid cooling produces rhyolite. But this is exactly what Gentry doesn't want to be.

Anyway…in an examination of forensics in any situation if some of the evidence is or has surely been tainted, usually none of it will be “relied on”

Which is the practice in journals. One case of dishonesty pretty much ends that scientist's ability to publish. If you mean that one dishonest scientist means the thousands of honest ones don't count, I'd say it was a rather biased court that would rule that if one person lies, everyone is lying.

so why should we not also apply this same “accepted principle” here

As you know, there are many, many cases of dishonesty in creationist literature. Should we then conclude that all creationists are dishonest? Keep in mind, the key to research results is reproducibility. If that isn't the case, then the author is in big trouble.

Unless you're publishing in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
http://www.jir.com/

 

[brother Paul]

Love the JIR (hillarious)...