Pauluc wrote: Mea Culpa. I see that you indeed have previously

Comment on Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results by Sean Pitman.

Pauluc wrote:

Mea Culpa. I see that you indeed have previously dispatched the experts if not the arguments of the experts and seem now to accept the word of another MD and unnamed bloggers possibly Ivanov and Kouznetsov and their accolytes who do not recognize any of the limitations of a technique that users and developers such as Taylor and Gove would recognize.

There is a good discussion on the background of old carbon in the context of the Borexino project by Gove and colleagues.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004NIMPB.223..333B

The goal of the old carbon project is to measure the ratio of 14C to 12C in methane at levels below 10−18 by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). This research is chiefly motivated by the need for very low background raw materials (methane, petroleum) to manufacture scintillator fluids for large volume neutrino detectors, particularly for solar neutrinos. The 14C activity in such material, introduced by the radioactivity of the reservoir rocks, cosmic rays or later handling, limits the low-energy sensitivity of the neutrino detector. This paper reviews the scintillator requirements for low-energy neutrino observation in terms of the 14C/12C ratio, as well as earlier AMS and decay counting measurements of this ratio at the 10−18 level. Recent experiments to determine the limitations of the heavy element line on the IsoTrace spectrometer for these ratio measurements are reported; analysis of the data obtained to date indicate a maximum interference limit of 14C/12C ≈ 10−19. This progress report will also mention some methods for reducing this interference further.

An article in Physics Letters B from 1998 by Almonti et al says of the varying C14 in petroleum that gives detectable and variable ages for some petroleum and coal;

Production of 14C deep underground can occur through nuclear reactions involving neutrons and α particles emitted by the surrounding natural radioactivity. The neutron flux deep underground originates chiefly from (α,n) reactions [15]on Al, Mg, Na and other elements in the surrounding rock. The uranium and thorium decay chains supply most of these α decays (neutrons are also emitted in spontaneous fission of uranium). Consequently, it is the abundance of uranium and thorium in the rock containing the petroleum that governs the abundance of 14C therein.

I see no reason to believe that any carbon found in fossils will not be subject to the same local production of C14 from the same particle radiation from Uranium-thorium decay and appear as less than 50000 year whatever its real age. That many fossils contain residual degraded organics identifiable by synchotron SRS-XRF or mass spec is now clear
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=20457935 ,
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org./content/278/1722/3209 ,
And Schweitzer has suggested mechanism for the maintenance of protein and degrade DNA with more than single bases from appropriate specimens. Both her Bone paper from 2013 and her previous paper from Proc R Soc B of 2007 (see table 1) suggest that there is a time frame for degradation that shows no collagen reactivity in any samples from cretaceous but reactivity in samples up to 300ka

This does not at all provide support for a scientific model that all these animals are 4000 years old.

I don’t think you understand the argument. Of course very small amounts of C14 can be produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium in rocks close by. That’s not the problem or the relevant question. The real question is, how much C14 can be produced by this method? And, why would this source of C14 production be so uniform? As I’ve already suggested to you, your argument that C14 production by uranium and thorium explains very high C14 levels within dinosaur bones equivalent to ages of 15-35 kyrs simply doesn’t seem like a tenable argument. Is there remotely enough uranium and thorium scattered in a fairly uniform manner all over the world to generate that much C14 underground? That’s a pretty big pill you’re asking me to swallow don’t you think? – especially given that a level of less than 20 parts per million of uranium and thorium was detected in the dinosaur bones that contained large quantities of radiocarbon? (Link) Beyond this, turning 12C into C14 by neutron capture isn’t very easy to do. In fact, nitrogen creates carbon-14 from neutrons “110,000 times more easily” than does carbon. This dramatically increases the amount of uranium and thorium that would be needed to produce all the necessary C14 to make your theory tenable.

For example, to produce a C14 age of 40,000 years we need a ratio of 14C/12C equal to about 1e-14. As best as I can tell, producing this ratio would require 125 atoms of uranium per carbon atom, which is a concentration by weight of 99.96% uranium (Link).

Also, according to your arguments, C14 dating would be pretty much worthless beyond about 10,000 years due to all the extra C14 being produced by uranium and thorium underground. No one believes that. So, how then can C14 be used on the one hand to “reliably” date mammoths and mastodons and the like as living some 10-35 kyrs ago, but when these same levels of C14 are discovered uniformly throughout thick coal beds or all dinosaur bones examined thus far it must have been the result of non-atmospheric C14 production? A 14C/12C ratio of only 1e-15 corresponds to a ~60,000 yr age for a specimen. We’re talking about less than half that age or more than twice as much C14. I’m sorry, but yours seems like a self-defeating argument even without knowing how much uranium and thorium would be needed. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Do you see the problem I’m having here with your argument? Or, do I need to read more talk.origins or wiki articles to figure it out?

As far as Schweitzer’s discoveries are concerned, I’m not sure of the significance of your point when you argue that no “collagen reactivity” was detected in response to collagenase in the dinosaur soft tissues? In her 2007 paper (Link) she did in fact note that, “antibody reactivity was significantly decreased after we digested dinosaur tissues with collagenase.” However, even if this wasn’t the case, so what? The really amazing thing is that there are soft tissues at all – to include sequencable antigenic proteins and even fragments of DNA in dinosaur bones dating from 60Ma to more than 150Ma (Link). Just a few years ago science had shown, by kinetic chemistry experiments, that such soft tissues and proteins should have been completely degraded within less than 100 ka. The current argument that iron helps to preserve soft tissues like formaldehyde doesn’t really solve the problem of protein kinetic chemistry decay.

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results
Oh please. There’s lots of evidence to support the catastrophic concept of the formation of the layers surrounding the Grand Canyon. At least 30% of the Grand Canyon layers are thought to be turbidites and up to 50% of the world’s sedimentary rocks are thought to be turbidites. Turbidites can flow hundreds of kilometers – even over very shallow gradients (1:1000). The “stacked forests” in Yellowstone were also buried by turbiditic mud flows coming from different directions over a short period of time. And turbiditic flows can form very very fast – and thick. One turbiditic flow traveling at up to 100 km/h broke 12 underwater telegraph cables as it stretched from the coast of Grand Banks, Nova Scotia to Europe (1929). These cables were miles apart and snapped in succession one after another as the turbidite spread its layer across the ocean floor. The layer it laid down was hundreds of meters thick.

As far as impact craters are concerned, I’m not sure what you’re asking for? These objects are found throughout the geologic column, even in Precambrian layers. Dozens of impact craters have been found from the pre-Cambrian to Pleistocene throughout almost every layer of the geologic column. The problem for uniformitarian thinking, of course, is that there simply aren’t the numbers of meter impacts that would be expected if the geologic column were truly as old as neo-Darwinists claim. It seems like these meteorites are more difficult to find than expected if the geologic column does indeed represent hundreds of millions of years of elapsed time. The current rate of meteor impact over the entire globe (for meteorites greater than 100g in size) is about 14 per 10 km^2 per year. That’s 1,400 million meteorites per 100 million years (i.e., 140 million kilograms or about 280 million pounds) per 10 km^2. You’d think then that they’d be a bit more common. But, they’re not.

For example, looking at the layers in the Grand Canyon in particular, according to mainstream geology, it would take an average of 100 million years to deposit about 100 feet (~30 meters) of sediment. Sandstone weighs about 2,323 Kg/m^3. There are 3 billion cubic meters in a 30 meter layer of sediment covering 10 km^2. That’s a total weight of almost 7 trillion Kg. Of this, 140 million Kg should be made up of meteoric material ( 0.002%). Another way to look at the same problem is that there should be enough meteoric material to make up about 60,000 cubic meters of sediment in 100 million years (0.002%).

Now, this might not seem like a significant percentage, but it is quite significant given that only a handful of meteoric rock fragments have ever been found in the layers of the geologic column. There should be literally tons of them. Yet, geologist Davis Young (1988, p.127) writes that, “The chances of finding a fossil meteorite in sedimentary rocks are remote. It is not to be expected.” G. J. McCall, in Meteorites and Their Origins (1973, p.270), said, “The lack of fossil record of true meteorites is puzzling, but can be explained by the lack of very diagnostic shapes and the chemical nature of meteorites, which allows rapid decay…”

It seems that rapid decay would have to be very rapid indeed – especially since far more delicate fossils are discovered far more commonly than are meteorites within the geologic column and fossil record.

As far as being responsible for the Noachian Flood, it wouldn’t take much. A few moderately sized meteors is all it would take to significantly shake up this planet, break up the thin crust, and cause worldwide flooding of Noachian proportions.

Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results
That’s what I think too…

Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results
Repeated waves of sediment could be carried by tidal actions as well as massive repetitive tsunami-type waves which traversed the entire globe over and over again. Each one of these sediment-baring waves would have laid down another layer quite rapidly – and from different directions given that multiple separate impact events took place during this time (accounting for the different types of sedimentary layers coming from different regions of the globe). This also means that there would have been periods of time when the freshly-deposited sedimentary layers would have been exposed to air (allowing for raindrops, dinosaur eggs that were very hastily laid, sometimes on multiple layers within the same hatch of eggs, and the like to be finely preserved). As the next wave started to return to such an area, the water level would have gradually risen at first, filling in these delicate trace fossils without destroying them. Also, underwater turbiditic flows of sediment are known to be able to cover and preserve fine details along the surface of the underlying soft sedimentary layer.

These concepts are not nearly as far fetched as trying to explain the Coconino as a long-standing desert environment – where the creatures only walked uphill all the time and where no traces of plant material existed… etc.