“Absurdly inappropriate and useless” or worthwhile to the progress of science?!?!
Prominent professor of evolutionary biology, PZ Myers, had the following to say about a challenge to extend the scientific investigation. Think about the assumptions being made. Why is he so closed off to furthering this scientific study?
“Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner identified some peculiar soft tissue deep in a T. rex bone, which Schweitzer claims is preserved collagen or fragments of blood vessels. This has been disputed, and some claim it’s scraps of a bacterial biofilm. But the main thing is that an unusual and difficult to identify material was found in a Cretaceous bone.
Will Duffy wants it carbon-dated. The fossil has already been dated; it’s over 70 million years old. Carbon dating is only good up to a maximum age of about 50,000 years. He wants to hold a yardstick up against a mile-long object and ask how long it is. This makes no sense at all.
Bob Enyart called Jack Horner and offered him $20,000 to measure the C14 in the T. rex specimen. You can tell Horner is both stunned and amused at the stupidity of the request.
The age of the specimen is not in question, and even if it were, carbon dating is so absurdly inappropriate and useless that only an ignorant clown would ask to do it: it doesn’t matter what number would come out of the measurement, it would be spurious, irrelevant, and uninterpretable…except that, because C14 does have an upper bound of 50,000 years, whatever number reported would be less than that, which is exactly what the creationists are trusting would happen. They’d love to hold that yardstick up against the mile long object and triumphantly announce that it’s only 36 inches long.”
Notice how “the age of the specimen is not in question” – but ages are assumed based on evidence – maybe the age is in question? Does it sound like Dr. Myers as a scientist is willing to follow this evidence where it may lead??
Read his full blog here: https://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/09/26/bob-enyart-and-will-duffy-part
