The Wrong Carbon Footprint

There follows another excerpt from the excellent book "In The Minds of Men" by Ian T. Taylor which, while somewhat dated, nevertheless lays bare a principle at work beneath many of the conjectural sciences whereby the results are selectively handled in order to support exiting presuppositions. In other words, results and facts are deliberately made to support a theory instead of being allowed to modify it.

I have broken the original text up into more readable paragraphs and have emphasized certain remarks for dramatic effect. All to show that any so-called scientific method is only as good, precise and honest as those who handle the data. Starting with a whole system of belief based on a geology that is dated by the fossils, and then having a fossil record that is validated by the geology, the smell of rotting rodent becomes redolent when further methodologies are enlisted and manipulated in order to prove the original assumptions.
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"In the last two decades some concern has been expressed for the usefulness of the C14 test method. Techniques have improved, but still there are uncertainties and absurd results, not with old material that appears young, for which there is no proof of age, but for recent material that appears old, for which there is proof. Living mollusk shells have been dated by the C14 method at up to 2,300 years, a freshly killed seal at 1,300 years, and wood from a growing tree at 10,000 years (Dort 1971; Huber 1958; Keith and Anderson 1963).

Whenever it can be justified, unexpected figures are adjusted up or down, according to the need, on the basis of a whole list of factors that are believed to have either added C14 atoms to the specimen if it appears too young, or received too little C14 in the first place if it appears too old. For instance, the new high-energy mass spectrometry method, previously mentioned, and involving a count of individual atoms, was delayed for some time because the ages of the samples consistently came out too young (Grootes 1980).

With the new technology, these were probably the true results, but they were found unacceptable because they did not reconcile with all the previous selected results and, ultimately, with Lyell's geology; the research workers were then forced to conclude that the young ages were due to an unknown source of C14 somewhere in the equipment! None of this is ever mentioned in popular magazines and textbooks, and the impression is left in the reader's mind that "absolute" chronology has been established by the radiocarbon method."

[Previous posts on this book can be found here and here.]