Evolution and the myth of "scientific consensus"

The Cadet said:

Eh... Not really. Just because the vast majority of people believe something does not mean that it is true. However, when we are talking about scientific disciplines, the consensus view really does help us understand what the experts think the evidence points to. Or, to put it another way, if you've got 10,000 people who intensely study a complex topic, and 9,999 come away with the same opinion, is it really unreasonable to think that they may have it right?

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Perhaps, perhaps not. There have been many times in the past when there was a consensus and it was incorrect. I'm just pointing out what is pointed out to believers all the time.

lifepsyop said:

Peer-review's main effectiveness is in protecting the ideologies of the peers. It is generally a shoddy system in regards to weeding out error, fraud, and bias.

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It has not always been this way. It's sad really.

Oncedeceived said:

It has not always been this way. It's sad really.

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There might be some truth to this, for example lots of money rests on peer reviews especially in medicine. But evidence to discredit the age of the world, evolution, i think not, just one more attempt to classify a scientific discipline as a religion.

Oncedeceived said:

It has not always been this way. It's sad really.

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So... When did it change? 150 years ago? 100 years ago? 50 years ago?

lifepsyop said:

Peer-review's main effectiveness is in protecting the ideologies of the peers. It is generally a shoddy system in regards to weeding out error, fraud, and bias.

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And yet, the discovery institute is able to tout a long list of papers it has published. Huh. Weird.

The Cadet said:

So... When did it change? 150 years ago? 100 years ago? 50 years ago?

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Doubt creeps in when there is money in play.

Goonie said:

There might be some truth to this, for example lots of money rests on peer reviews especially in medicine. But evidence to discredit the age of the world, evolution, i think not, just one more attempt to classify a scientific discipline as a religion.

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Science should always be about where the evidence leads and money should never be the reason behind any scientific exploration or discovery. There should never be any idea or hypothesis that is rejected until it is falsified or knowledge increases.

The Cadet said:

So... When did it change? 150 years ago? 100 years ago? 50 years ago?

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It is hard to pinpoint the exact time. I think it gradually declined.

Oncedeceived said:

Science should always be about where the evidence leads and money should never be the reason behind any scientific exploration or discovery. There should never be any idea or hypothesis that is rejected until it is falsified or knowledge increases.

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True, and evolution and an old earth is where the research has consistantly led.

lifepsyop said:

Peer-review's main effectiveness is in protecting the ideologies of the peers. It is generally a shoddy system in regards to weeding out error, fraud, and bias.

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Sadly, this is true.

lifepsyop said:

I think they investigated the calcified bone and found the collagen preserved underneath.

"...Serial sectioning of one sample I presenting fibres and of one presenting the erythrocyte-like structures revealed that these fibres are less dense than the matrix surrounding them and that an internal structure is present inside the erythrocyte-like structures. With a transmission electron microscope (TEM) we observed that the fibres show ~67nm banding, which could possibly be considered collagen fibre remains. Finally, using mass spectrometry, we found peaks that are consistent with fragments of amino acids present in collagen. The spectra obtained from the erythrocyte-like structures are surprisingly similar to the spectra obtained from the whole blood of an extant emu.

...Detection of fragments of the amino acids normally found in collagen supports the results obtained from TEM analysis where the ~67nm banding is consistent with potential preservation of the original quaternary structure of the protein."

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I think you're wrong here. "Calcified collagen fibres" is clearly talking about a mineralized tissue. The lower density and diagnostic structures don't mean that the tissue is soft, merely that those structures are preserved.

Those experiments were conducted over a couple years in a controlled environment. That is the definition of speculation to extrapolate that to 75 million years. Additionally the already wildly speculative hypothesis relies on preserved samples being encased in blood for its iron content, yet soft tissues are being discovered that are located on parts of the body that generally do not come into contact with blood.

Mark Armitage, (a technician that was fired for publishing a soft-tissue discovery) addresses this claim and explains in more detail here.

I might remind you that evolutionists castigate young-earth creationists for appealing to similar ad-hoc speculations. Yet there is no shame when evolutionists do the same in order to protect their age-of-the-earth beliefs.


When YEC's speculate to protect an idea it is "religion". When Evolutionists speculate to protect an idea it is "In science we admit when we don't know".. just an interesting double-standard.

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Extrapolation is not the same thing as speculation. Untreated blood vessels turned to ooz in days while the treated vessels were preserved two years later. Clearly iron has the power to preserve tissues. Schweitzer's experiment is a proof of concept, not the final answer and she did not present it as such, despite what Armitage claims. And Armitage's video is pretty bad. He starts by saying that the test is bogus because of the laboratory conditions, then by the end of the video he's claiming that iron doesn't actually preserve tissue which is objectively false. You can't honestly be convinced by his absurd argument that if iron could really preserve tissue he would already know about it and rich people would be using it to prolong their lives and therefore it must not have this property. Schweitzer's experiment proves that it does regardless of whether you accept the extrapolation. And the isolation of certain tissues from blood is basically irrelevant, if it is even true. He seems to be unaware that groundwater is often rich iron. I have worked on literally dozens of dinosaur specimens encased in and impregnated by ironstone. Ironstone is the result of copious amounts of iron in the groundwater so it is ridiculous to say
that any tissue would be isolated from a source of iron. It is empiracle fact that iron preserves tissue and that iron is common in environments where fossilization takes place. It does not therefore seem unreasonable that the structure of tissues could be preserved for far longer than previously supposed.
And again, Schweitzer's work is something new. It's just the beginning, not the final word. It is entirely likely, as is so often the case, that there is more than one process at work. Just because a new hypothesis is proposed to explain a new phenomenon doesn't make it ad hoc or invalid, particularly when the fundamental concept is backed up by empiracle observation.

I find the analogy too simplistic to relate.

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Sorry, but this reads like a cop-out because you have not even bothered to explain why this analogy is not really analogous. Please state your case explicitly instead of brushing off the point entirely.

At least do me the courtesy of answering the simple question I posed in the context of the analogy itself: is it more parsimonious to start with the idea that all the indications of cougars being present are valid and that the previous understanding of their distribution was flawed than to assume all those congruent observations are wrong? Yes or no?

Equally dubious is the claim that dating methods unequivocally support geologic time, when we know for a fact that geologic time has never been allowed to be questioned since its acceptance. If an idea cannot be questioned, it is hard to imagine that research is not inevitably biased towards supporting it and data ultimately filtered towards those ends.

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Declaring that your suspicions beat equal weight to a practicing geologist does not make it so. In the end you justnkeep falling back on your unsubstantiated insistence, despite qualified testimony to the contrary which you have not even addressed let alone refuted, that contamination is assumed rather than identified.

And your point here ignores the fact that the idea of an old Earth had to overcome immense resistance from the mainstream young earth view.

Subduction Zone said:

Really? If that was the case surely you have some evidence that supports your claim. And why would it be necessary to mention Jesus even if he did what you claimed?
What "freaks"? And they have shown how the universe could have created itself? You don't seem to realize that if you claim "something" needed to make the universe the exact same logic says that "something" had to make your God.
Oh my, there go the irony meters again. The man with no concept of how science is attacking me because he believes a .... Oh well don't want to get into too much trouble here for pointing out your inability to reason.
No, that is no religion, that is observable testable science. So you are finally admitting that you are wrong. That's a relief.
Then name them. Your first one failed terribly.How can peopl e have hatred for something that does not exist? And you know that calling the Bible "God's word" is extremely blasphemous.

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Showtime. Nothing else really matters except you having a bible case, which you do not have...or a science case for a same state past which you require.

All other talk is wasted.

Justatruthseeker said:

He can't. Which is why all he can do is make claims. He can't show you that life propagates any other way than breed mating with breed producing new breeds through exchange of genetic information or through the replication of that information and variations from recessive and dominant genes. All he has is claims - which is why that is all he ever makes.

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Well then his blather must be relegated to the funny little wicked place it deserves.

lifepsyop said:

Peer-review's main effectiveness is in protecting the ideologies of the peers. It is generally a shoddy system in regards to weeding out error, fraud, and bias.

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So propose a better one.

lifepsyop said:

Right because nobody is financially invested in perpetuating the Evolutionary narrative. After all, it's not like these institutions draw worldwide public support from being seen as the keepers of the truth about the origins of everything in the universe.

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You don't think you could gain a lot more funding by proving the current explanation wrong, providing a viable alternative, and providing evidence for said alternative?

lifepsyop said:

Right because nobody is financially invested in perpetuating the Evolutionary narrative. After all, it's not like these institutions draw worldwide public support from being seen as the keepers of the truth about the origins of everything in the universe.

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If money is your goal you don't decide to go into science.

And what exactly would be the point of a worldwide conspiracy to maintain an 'evolutionary narrative'?

lifepsyop said:

Right because nobody is financially invested in perpetuating the Evolutionary narrative. After all, it's not like these institutions draw worldwide public support from being seen as the keepers of the truth about the origins of everything in the universe.

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Really? As I has been said, when religion lost the argument to science regarding creation or evolution, some accepted theistic evolution, others variations old earth intelligent design etc. and others the strawman argument that classifies evolution as a religion. Since if you have lost the argument redefine the terms.

dad said:

Showtime. Nothing else really matters except you having a bible case, which you do not have...or a science case for a same state past which you require.

All other talk is wasted.

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dad, you are of course being a hypocrite by using the very science that you deny. And your claims are not even biblical. You have to abuse the Bible to support your beliefs. But then we all know that. You have less than nothing, you shoot yourself in the foot so often that your shoes could be used as colanders.