Setterfield and the variable speed of light model

>>>>>>2. Barry’s work with statistics has been defended by both a physicist (at the time a senior research physicist with Stanford Research Institute International) and a professional statistician. <<<<<<

Helen, what you say above is simply not true as Mark also pointed out. This has been pointed out to you before and you keep repeating it. How about sticking to the truth from now on?

 

Helen:
I was out to breakfast this morning with Dr. Dean Kenyon. I asked him if he knew your husband. He did, and thinks very highly of him and his work. He says he did some collaboration about ten years ago for him and was able to verify the work that was presented to him. Dean is following Barry's work and believes it has much merit.

God Bless

 

Dean Kenyon is a biologist and although he had some formal education in physics, his career was in biology and there is no indication that he is especially well qualified to comment on Setterfield's theories. He is a co-author of "Of Pandas and People" and here is what one reviewer had to say about the book:

"There is not a single instance of biological research using intelligent-design theory to explain life's diversity, and though both Davis and Keynon are professional scientists, neither has apparently published anything in the professional literature about their theory."

 

Peter101

Dean Kenyon is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University. He is one of the contributing authors to the festschrifts of the noted origin-of-life researchers, A.I. Oparin and Sidney Fox.

Kenyon is the co-author of Biochemical Predestination, one of the two best-selling advanced level books on chemical evolution. He holds an S.B. in Physics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University. He has been a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Berkeley), a visiting scholar to Trinity College, Oxford University, and a Research Associate at NASA-Ames Research Center.

His current research compares the statistical and linguistic "texture" of the two types of DNA - coding DNA and so-called "junk" DNA.

You don’t even know what Dean Kenyon collaborated on to say he was not qualified to do it.

God Bless

 

I simply said that he was not well qualified in physics. I was aware of everything that you posted about him in the message just above this. Your comments simply confirm that he is not expert in the type of physics that Setterfield is writing about. From what I have seen, Kenyon has not had a particularly outstanding career in science. He has had a modest career in mainstream science, and the comment that he has published no research on the Intelligent Design idea still stands.

 

Peter101
My comment that you don’t know what Dean Kenyon collaborated on to say he was not qualified to do it, still stands.

I would guess that you are not qualified to judge Dean Kenyon's credientials from your remarks.

God Bless

 

You are very welcome, Helen. I will give him the message.

God Bless

[ June 01, 2003, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: Kathryn ]

 

Kathryn wrote:

Ugh! I cannot think of anything else I have read here that has made me feel as sick as the way you have used your friend, Kathryn. It might be interesting to find out what Kenyon, as a scientist, finds interesting and significant in Setterfield's work. It is of no interest, and is highly offensive, for you to use your friend to give a scientific testimonial sans scientific content. Whatever one might think of his recent work Dean Kenyon has had a distinguished scientific career. I would never degrade him as you have by making him an authority-supporter/cheerleader for Setterfield or anyone else.

Amid all of the schleck of this thread, I, Peter101, Paul of Eugene and just about all of the critics of Setterfield have endeavored not only to register the fact of our finding his work of poor quality, but have presented more-or-less detailed reasons why we think it is scientifically inadequate. And in some cases Setterfield or at least his wife as surrogate, has responded with reasons why his work should be taken seriously or with clarification of his work. You don't have to agree with either the objections or the defenses, but at least there is some substance there. (I don't think enough substance to warrant publication in any scientific Journal, but at least some substance.)

And now you come along and tell us that Dr. Dean Kenyon supports Setterfield's work. If this were a political campaign I wouldn't notice; but this is supposed to be at least a low-level scientific discussion. If Kenyon supports Setterfield, fine. Let him explain why. If he can't or won't explain why, then he has been ill-used as an authority testimonial supporter of Setterfield.

 

Helen wrote:

You still don't get it, Helen. The results were in accorance with its program, no? In any case, the authors failed to check the plausibility of those computer-generated results. They failed to check for the most basic errors. Any reasonable human looking at the scattered speed-of-light data and then seeing a claimed .99999999+ correlation coefficient would have immediately known that something was wrong, and would have NEVER published such a silly result. Setterfield failed to do so.

That was a reasonable thing for Norman to do, but it doesn't get Setterfield off the hook. Just because a result is computer-generated is no reason that it must be believed. If it is entirely implausible, as was the Setterfield/Norman .99999999+ correlation coefficient, then a human author must see a red flag when presented with such a result. Setterfield's failure to realize that the .9999999+ correlation coefficient was garbage, an artifact of likely faulty progbramming, was inexcusable.

I don't remember it, but it doesn't matter. It is true that Norman, as an experienced programmer, should have caught that error in output. (There couldn't have been that much output.)

Regardless of what Norman did, however, Setterfield read the .99999999+ correlation coefficient and failed to see immediately its implausibility. He published it, perhaps under pressure, but nevertheless he published a result that he reasonably should have seen to be patently flawed. That's bad enough, but now he, through you, still 20 years later blames the computer for his own mistake.

No, Setterfield through his wife still blames that old computer (which probably is long, long gone) for the blunder of Setterfield (who is stil, stil here, but hasn't yet acknowledged that it was he who blundered so long, long ago, and not the long, long gone computer.)

Now either Setterfield is or is not acting in good faith. If he is not acting in good faith in blaming the computer, obviously this says much about his present character. If he is acting in good faith in blaming the computer for his own mistake, then Setterfield is showing us that he has not, over these long, long years, learned from his mistake of long, long ago. Either way this issue is current in assessing Setterfield's current capability or competence.

Of course the issue could, and probably would go away if Setterfield would acknowledge his own old blunder and demonstrate that he has learned thatit was an old blunder of his. But for him to continue to deny what was patently his own blunder is to deny that he has advanced past that blunder.

And everybody who worked with computers knew that mistakes were made, just as anyone who currently (or at any time) does mathematical calculations knows that mistakes can be made. So what does one do? One thing that we are all taught from earliest undergraduate years is to check the limits. In this case those limits might be perfectly-correlated data or completely uncorrelated data. The correlation coefficients would be, respectively, +/-1 and 0. Any data between those extremes would have a correlation coefficient between those extremes. Anyone sophisticated enough to use a correlation coefficient whould and should have known that. So when Setterfield obtained a correlation for patently scattered light-speed data essentially equal to 1 he should have immediately known that something was wrong with that result. He might not have known what was wrong, but he should have known that something was wrong. He failed to detect the problem. And that is his blunder. Yes, anyone could have misprogrammed the computer and gotten out that garbage .99999999+ correlation coefficient, but no computer user could have failed to spot that problem. And if he had, he wouldn't go 20 years and still blame the computer for his own mistake.

Well, I can't speak for Paul, but when I've looked at his work from 1987 and beyond and pointed out a very few of the reasons why it fails to meet the standards generally accepted by the physics community I am rebuffed as above and whined to and told (sans evidence)that I wouldn't find anything from a creationist to meet my standards.

 

Helen, please read your own words very carefully as follows:

>>>>>>2. Barry’s work with statistics has been defended by both a physicist (at the time a senior research physicist with Stanford Research Institute International) and a professional statistician. <<<<<<

The key point in your remarks is that Barry's statistical treatment was defended. That is not true.

What was done by the papers that you linked to was an entirely fresh statistical treatment of Barry's data. If you had said that his conclusion about speed of light was defended, you would be correct. But what you said was that his statistical treatment was defended, and that is simply not true. I hope you can appreciate that his defenders did not say one kind word, or any word at all about Setterfield's statistics, only about his ultimate conclusion that the speed of light has changed. The valid criticism that Mark and I have made has to do with Setterfield's statistical treatment, which no one, not even his friends, has defended.

 

There are a number of things in the geology of the earth which seem to be in conflict with Setterfield's ideas. I will mention one here. There has been some work over the past few years on lake varves. Mainstream science has concluded that varves are laid down annually in fresh water lakes. In recent years, someone has calculated that a certain lake, I think in Japan, has more than 40,000 varves. It occurred to someone to date these varves with C-14 dating. The C-14 dates turn out to correspond very closely with the age of the varve as determined by visual counting. That would be expected if the decay rates have not changed, but would be totally unexpected based on Setterfield's model. According to the Setterfield model, the C-14 dating just gives the appearance of age and not the real age. In other words, Setterfield's model predicts the following:

1. There should be no annual layers of an age greater than his assumed age of the earth. I believe that is in the range of 6 to 8 thousand years. Remember that varves are based on the number of orbits, which Setterfield maintains is some number less than 10,000. Perhaps Helen can supply us with the exact number.

2. If annual layers exist in the range of say 5,000 years, they should show a much older C-14 age, because the faster decay rates near the beginning of the earth would show much older C-14 ages.

But the fact that varves exist that correspond to annual layers of greater than 40,000 years, contradicts his model, and the fact that there is a good agreement between the varve count and the C-14 ages also contradict his model.

Setterfield and Helen can salvage this situation only by denying that the varves represent annual events. But since no creationist has done any research on varves, it is a difficult chore to convince mainstream science that the varves do not represent annual events.

 

MD Kludge:
I have not used my friend. I have no agenda. This is Baptist Board and they have been gracious enough to provide a forum for an exchange of ideas, thoughts, facts, beliefs, theories, etc. among Christians. It is that simple to me.

God Bless

 

>>>>>So right now he is writing a specific note we will put on Barry's website to the effect that yes, they did and continue to support the 1987 use of the data and statistical methods!<<<<<<

The criticism that Mark and I referred to involved Barry's use of the suspect correlation coefficient of 1.0 or near 1.0. And it is not about Barry's paper of 1987. The links you mentioned did not defend Setterfield's statistical methods that Mark and I were commenting on. You incorrectly claimed that the links you mentioned defended Barry's statistical methods on that point. You are falling now into an error that you have fallen into in the past, and that is not understanding which paper is being discussed. To be quite precise Helen, here is the link that discusses Barry's work from 1981 and it is also the link that makes the original criticism. Please read it before repeating your mistaken idea that we were commenting on Barry's 1987 statistical work. Here is the link:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c-decay.html

Why don't you ask your friends if they have defended or want to defend Barry's use of statistics in the 1981 paper? If they do, I will be pleased to learn that of that fact and to hear their defense. You seem to have amnesia about the 1981 paper. I don't blame, you but it happened.

[ June 02, 2003, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: Peter101 ]

 

>>>>>>Peter, I'm not sure if you are simply writing out of ignorance or whether you are having a difficult time with the truth.<<<<<

Helen, your insults are violating the rules of this forum. I hope the moderators notice. All of the papers you refer to have not made it into the mainstream literature, but rather are in the creationist literature that is generally ignored by mainstream science. I think the papers you mention are ignored for good reason. When some of your views make it into the mainstream literature, then maybe they can be taken seriously - not before.

 

The thread has wandered off course. It's finished.