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> "Peer review" among the IDiots likely consists of checking how well > the given paper conforms to Holy Scripture. Peer review among creation scientists probably selects the "peers" from among other creation scientists, equally committed to the misrepresentation of science in order to promote a misrepresentation of Genesis or other scriptures. Young earth "science" does not conform well to most scriptures because most scriptures disapprove of lying. Young earthers often label particular claims as "Biblical", actually meaning "in agreement with the traditions of creation science, which is sort of inspired by bits of the Bible and other sources without regard to serious consideration of their orignial meaning." Intelligent Design peer reviewed papers, on the other hand, often appear in more or less authentically peer-reviewed settings, but either the journal/volume/etc. is not actually adept at dealing with the actual topic of the paper, so that the reviewer doesn't recognize what's going on, or else the paper does not actually do anything significant to support ID versus evolutionary interpretations (e.g., "X evolutionary mechanism doesn't work so well under these circumstances", which does not address other mechanisms nor how frequent those circumstances really are). Although the average person doesn't realize a difference between the creation scientists and the Intelligent Design advocates, standard ID doesn't care about the age of the earth and thus offends the hard core creation scientists (but probably doesn't stop the young earthers from stealing ID arguments). The media often isn't interested in details, either-I know someone who teaches at a Christian college who got contacted by a national news network. The network hung up as soon as it was clear that he was not saying what they wanted about Robertson's foolish statement about Dover. Some of the RATE-type attacks on radiometric decay involve deliberate misuse of radiometric dating to generate screwy-sounding results in order to discredit the dating. E.g., 14C dating of ancient carbon (diamond, coal, etc.) is an indication of the amount of modern contamination, e.g., through chemical exchange with the atmosphere on exposed surfaces, adhering bacteria, or fingerprints. The polonium halo argument is particularly remarkable in that it requires the legitimacy of radiometric dating. Polonium halos can be identified only if the laws of radiometric decay have not changed since they formed (plus the need to prove that a thin section cut through the center of an unsquashed spherical void, a detail neglected by young earthers). Polonium halos can be claimed to have anything to do with the formation of the rock only if it is possible to identify and compensate for possible post-formational alteration or contamination (also neglected by young-earthers). If the laws of radiometric decay are unchanged, and if alterations and contaminations can be identified, then radiometric dates are valid. (There are additional problems with the Po halo argument-I'm sure Talk.Origins has more detail, and there's an old J Geol Ed article as well.) -- Dr. David Campbell 425 Scientific Collections Building Department of Biological Sciences Biodiversity and Systematics University of Alabama, Box 870345 Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345 USA
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