Moved on to a new tactic I see -- the "peer review isn't perfect so it is useless" defense of pseudoscience.
No one spoke of infallibility of anything or anyone (that would be a rather arrogant claim to make). I was only commenting on the obvious dishonesty of Snelling writing scientific papers in scientific journals with all of the normal framing and writing pseudoscience papers for pseudoscience journals.
In this case,
@sjastro commented that he wrote things for the creationist journal that would not be acceptable in a regular geology journal, and I commented that since he publishes in the latter as well, he very well knew this.
I do not like pseudoscience any more than you do. Where authors are speculating they should say so and distinguish that from science.
But For an analytical guy, you do love the use of non sequitur.
1/ I didn’t use the word useless.
I DEFENDED the necessity, but I noted the flaws in an imperfect system.
Never is that more true than around things with "religious" angle.
On the topic of this thread - radiocarbon dating - the impact of faulty review has been THE problem as I will show.
2/ The limitations of peer review help give credence to pseudoscience it certainly does not eliminate it all.
Take the peer reviewed paper that claimed to have “ faked the shroud” . Except it described a process of pigment. But the shroud image isn’t pigment. So ALL the reviewers checked objectivity in at the door, and that paper gets far more publicity than the real science!
People think the paper is "true" because it is peer reviewed!!!! even though it is pseudoscience.
But this IS a thread about radio dating and the failings of peer review are largely responsible for a wholesale misleading of the public on the shroud dating. There are many examples, here are a few.
4/ - In the radiocarbon paper - Burleigh, leese, tite 86 ( the pre shroud process validation tests)- the AMS dating failed!!! So one peruvian cloth that gave half date, was substituted for another. Which even then barely passed in confidence interval. The centre of measurements still younger than the cloth.
Because this study was about validation of a technique, not about the dates of the cloths, The reviewers should have forced the authors in conclusion to acknowledge that their view of "confidence interval" was metrological wishful thinking which wrongly excluded the possibility of big systematic error. The authors did not seem to "get" the idea that intersample variation (on which they quote confidence intervals) is not the same as measurement error.
A proper conclusion to that paper should have PREVENTED the later shroud dating until the source of error was traced. That is what WOULD have happened in a GMP lab - the equipment would be sidelined. The reviewers are to blame.
5 - In the famous nature paper - Damon et Al 89. The quoted deviations did not line up with the data.
A reviewer should have found it. Homogeneity was not a sideshow. It was THE issue. It needed checking. Was the date trustworthy? Was it possible to GIVE a date? A failure of homogeity says no date is possible.
As it was van haelst later showed the paper was inconsistent, and probably inhomogeneous. But was it just printing errors?. But point blank refusal of the labs to release data hid the real source of the problem - indeed clearly showed there was a problem - till ultimately a legal process obtained the data from british museum which proved the data had been fiddled. The reviewers could have smelt a rat way back when, when Van haelst found it.
6- The first serious challenge to the dating was by Marino et Al, who used spectrographic results from STURP and others to show the sample area was undoubtedly chemically anomalous. It was made of different stuff to the rest of the shroud. Radio Carbon refused to publish it. Rogers tried to persuade them - and it was his resulting work that showed that the sample was anomalous in textile leading to the anomalous spectrography. In this case the reviewers remarks got published in correspondence so we know who they are. It turns out the reviewers were those whose work was being questioned.
In short the failure in ALL of these cases was the AMS community and sycophants of it
were being allowed to mark their own homework. Reviewing it (indeed what was even in the main publications) was "jobs for the boys" And that IS a serious flaw in the "reviewer" system.
Never is it more true than around topics with a religious connection.
As for the RC dating "accuracy" Meacham ( the only archeologist connected with STURP) said it all both before , during and after the radio dating. Dating is indicative not definitive, and only then if following a proper protocol the daters ignored.
7 This falasy of "confidence interval" representing accuracy is a widespread myth in RC dating. All of them need to go on a metrology course. They are isotope measurers not daters seemingly.
Take the Radiocarbon confidence interval of the Sudarium which Way post dates the actual provenance! How can it be if the "confidence" interval is right?
The accuracy vs precision of radio dates particularly around textiles needs much more attention. Meacham states the case of a mummy in rylands museum manchester whose wrappings are ( supposed by RC dating to be) 1000 years different to the body it contains!
I repeat - meacham stated before the test. Radio dates are indicative they are not definititve.
So I blame reviewers for much of the shroud dating Fiasco.
