Thank you for that. I am actually very familiar with Dr. Plaisted and his work. He is a very smart man who got his PhD from Stanford in computer science. He has gotten himself in a lot of trouble (and I do mean a lot) by pretending to be an expert in fields he has absolutely no experience in, such as evolution, radioactive dating, cosmology, and a host of other fields and writing articles about them making false claims and using false or unverified data. He has done no research whatsoever in any field other than computer science. Unfortunately, he is smart enough to convince people that do not know anything about those topics that he is right and has done much harm to both legitimate scientists and his own religion as a result. He posted a bunch of articles on his university’s website leading many people to think they were legitimate scientific articles. He was severely reprimanded and is lucky to still have a job. I know the university had his articles removed from the main areas of the website, but I do believe that they may still be linked to on his personal page (which I am guessing they are since the link you posted had cs.unc.edu in it. Since I an only knowledgeable in nuclear physics, I will not pretend to be an expert on evolution and other fields like Dr. Plaisted does and will address his article on radioactive decay/dating methods. It is very long and filled with a lot of false information so it will take me a while to finish, plus I am going to address the excerpt you posted by John Webb first, which is actually based on real and honest scientific inquiry and experimentation rather than a man abusing his position and titles of Doctor and Professor to spread lies and misinformation.
[/quote]
I have no clue whether you are right or wrong…but I am surprised you haven’t presented any resources supporting your post.[/quote]
If you want me to post a copy of his reprimand from UNC, I cannot post it because it is confidential and not for public viewing. I was at his hearing several years ago to testify against some of his false claims involving Potassium-Argon dating since I am one of the leading experts on Potassium decay and I will not be posting any of my published research because I will not reveal my name. When I analyse his article, I will be providing sources that do not have my name on them of course. As to his articles being removed from the website, just go to his page at UNC: David A. Plaisted's Home Page I could not find a single link to any of his falsified articles, although I did not look at all of the links. It does have a comprehensive list of his research, none of which has anything to do with any of the topics he pretends to be an expert in.
It is now posted on a creationist website that I am not familiar with and I am not sure why the web address still says cs.usc.edu on it, but I will make a call to a friend of mine who is a chemist there and see if he can tell me why. If it is not privileged information, I will post the response here.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Not to sound confrontational, Matt, but for the sake of the discussion why should we here on TN accept your opinion on this matter? You’ve been here for a grand total of a few days.
What are your credentials?
If I were to present a geologist with impressive credentials (which I can, trust me) who has views that differ from yours (trust me, I can) is there a reason we should we defer to you?
Would you lean toward discrediting this geologist because he doesn’t toe your line? Or would you admit that latitude in this field is acceptable? Even constructive?[/quote]
My credentials:
Undergraduate degree from what Americans refer to as the University of Moscow
PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. My dissertation research involved potassium decay. I will not be any more specific than that on my dissertation or my published research because it could lead to someone identifying me. And as to your geologist friend, I am sure he/she is a great geologist and is very smart, but unless he also has advanced degrees (read PhD) in nuclear physics along with several years of postdoc research, his/her knowledge of radioactive decay/dating techniques will be very rudimentary compared to mine. Geologists use radioactive dating methods (actually they very rarely use the complicated techniques anymore, nuclear physicists do), they do not really study it and all pertinent research on the topic that I know of is done by nuclear physicists such as myself. I will give his/her ideas due merit and consideration, but it will pretty much be the equivalent of a 5 year old trying to lecture Einstein on relativity (I am not comparing myself to Einstein here it is just an example.)
I have nearly concluded my cursory research into your link about John Webb and will have an analysis on it done tomorrow if I get to leave work early. It will take me a little longer to take apart all of Dr. Plaisted’s lies. I will likely do it in parts over the course of several days.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Matt, not that I expect you to snap to like a Marine recruit in boot camp but I was hoping you’d answer this question that I posted awhile back:
Please show us how we can prove that the decay rate of potassium and uranium has remained constant throughout the course of the earth’s/universe’s history. Absolutely constant…how do we KNOW?
Maybe you just missed it or maybe you intentionally avoided it. I don’t know.
Do your best to present it in layman’s terms. Thanks.[/quote]
I will address this in my first post on Dr. Plaisted’s article if you don’t mind waiting until after I post about John Webb’s experiments. Those are actually based on honest scientific data so I will address them first and I should have an analysis of Webb’s experiments done tomorrow. And yes, I will do my best to present my analyses in laymen’s terms. I will also address the questions you have asked in recent posts. Well, I will address the ones that pertain to nuclear physics. Some of them have more to do with geology than nuclear physics, and I am not a geologist and so will not pretend to have more than a rudimentary knowledge of it.
…And as to your geologist friend, I am sure he/she is a great geologist and is very smart, but unless he also has advanced degrees (read PhD) in nuclear physics along with several years of postdoc research, his/her knowledge of radioactive decay/dating techniques will be very rudimentary compared to mine…
[/quote]
If he disagreed with you would he be “wrong?”
If I presented a nuclear physicist who had views that differed from yours would he be “wrong?”[/quote]
I never said he would be wrong. I said his knowledge of nuclear physics will not even be remotely comparable to mine so the chances of his finding an actual verifiable flaw in radioactive decay/dating techniques are very slim. By all means produce him and I will discuss the topic with him, but I already have plenty of misinformation to debunk with the article you posted by Dr. Plaisted.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Do you agree with Frederic B. Jueneman (not a creationist by any stretch of the imagination) in regards to radiometric dating:
“There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences.”
(Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, ‘Secular catastrophism’. Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, pp.21)[/quote]
This has already been thoroughly debunked, but I will go ahead and do so again if it will make you happy. Complete with sources and after my analyses of Dr. Plaisted, the first part of which will be up tomorrow along with an analysis of John Webb’s work.
Before I give the article a more thorough reading, push, I’d like to know your thoughts on the following points (I’m not going to waste time on a skimmer):
This is after looking back as far as 12 billion years, not 300 million.
What do you think the implications are for the bold part as far as our discussion?
The underlined part?
[quote]Nevertheless
…they provide important complementary constraints on any variations of α and show that it cannot have changed by much more than 10% in either case.[/quote]
So this figure they are observing to be different over a 12 billion year span can’t be much more off than 10%?
What would this do for the margin of error of something measured at 300 million years?
[quote]
This translates to an upper limit on any fractional change in the value of α of the order 10^-7 over about 4.6 billion years[/quote]
Please keep your answers within the context of our discussion. The discussion hasn’t shifted to quasars just yet.
I’ll give the article a more thorough reading, check your answers and respond.
[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
This has already been thoroughly debunked, but I will go ahead and do so again if it will make you happy. Complete with sources and after my analyses of Dr. Plaisted, the first part of which will be up tomorrow along with an analysis of John Webb’s work.[/quote]
ARE YOU TELLING ME A QUOTE REGARDING A SCIENTIFIC METHOD FROM [u]30 YEARS AGO[/u] IS NO LONGER VALID??!?!??
Dude, don’t put this much time into debunking push’s quotes and links – he can’t debate you straight up so he is just going to go hog wild with the ctrl+v until you realize how tedious he is to discuss this with and give up. The faster he enters “spam the discussion mode”, the faster he realizes he’s getting nowhere with anyone.