Setterfield and the variable speed of light model

>>>>>First of all, we are talking about the 1987 Report and nothing that came before. I had been pressured into publishing before that, as I have stated on my website, and have requested that material published before 1987 in creation publications not be taken into consideration when dealing with the total of my work.<<<<<<<

No, the 1987 report is not what I was talking about. All of your responses in the last few days seem to be about that report, but I was quoting the critical comments by Day, which were about a 1981 paper published in a creationist journal. The link that I cited, giving Day's critique, tells what he was referring to. If you want to declare the scientific equivalent of bankruptcy and wipe the slate clean prior to 1987, I suppose you can do that. But readers can still form an opinion about your ability by reading Day's comments. Helen offered the work by Montgomery as defending your statistics against the critical comments by Day. I simply pointed out that Montgomery does not defend the methods of the 1981 paper but offers a new analysis. While the new analysis does defend your conclusions, it certainly does not address the criticisms made by Day. And your, Setterfield's, published response to Day does not answer his major criticisms either. It seems that you, Setterfield, did not read my original posts which made quite clear that I was talking about Day's comments.

On a different point,
I will quote one of your recent comments below:

"Peter101 claims that Montgomery's articles were only a response to Aardsma's critique. This is not true,...... but Montgomery also did an entirely new analysis".

Your comment above is not quite accurate about what I said. I agree that Montgomery did an entirely new analysis and I mentioned that in my post. The point I was trying to make was that because it was an entirely new analysis, it was not a response to Day's criticism, as Helen seemed to imply. Helen is often quite careless in characterizing the gist of other publications.

If you want to declare bankruptcy, in a scientific sense, and have it effective in 1987, then I am sure people will accept that. But my criticism is that you ought not to offer your comments on Day's critique as being responsive to his comments, because it clearly was not. You didn't even deal with his comments on your mistaken statistics.

 

Somebody emailed me a link to a site on the website of the Institution for Creation Research critical of Barry Setterfield's use of statistics. It seems to be fairly recently written. It is a criticism of the 1987 paper, apparently . . .

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-179.htm

 

>>>>>We have notified Talk Origins of the nonsense of the Day material -- and it is nonsense!<<<<<<<


O.K. well, maybe you can explain to us exactly how the statistical criticism of Day is nonsense. You will see earlier in this thread, an exact quote from Day. Do you agree or disagree that you can get a correlation coefficient of 1.0 when none of the points fall on the line? Please respond precisely to this point and don't try to change the subject. I am not interested in Montgomery's analysis. I am interested in how you and Setterfield can refute the detailed criticism of Day. You have said the Day's criticism is nonsense, so now you must explain how exactly. Your saying it does not make it so.

 

Helen and Barry,

The following is the quote from Day that I would like you to respond to. You have spent several days avoiding comment, but now that you have characterized Day's comments as nonsense, I don't see how you can avoid telling us how his comments are nonsense exactly. Don't try to change the subject, comment on this:

"The final blow to Setterfield's credibility is his statistical analysis of the results, given in Appendix 3, in which he discards 3 of the 41 data points shown in an earlier table, and claims a coefficient of determination r2 of "1 to nine significant figures, indicating a near perfect fit to the data" (emphasis added). As anyone with even the most basic knowledge of analysis will know (and as Setterfield will later learn the hard way), a coefficient of determination of 1 can only be realized if the data points lie precisely on the curve in question, yet Setterfield shows a pathetic ignorance of this fact by following the above claim with, "All told, 17 values were above the curve and 21 below, the r2 value indicating a perfectly balanced distribution of the cluster of points as well as close proximity to the curve."

In fact, as Setterfield openly admits, not a single data point of the 38 considered lay on the curve, yet this does not prevent him from claiming a perfect correlation."

 

Fair enough, I looked again for Barry's rebuttal material, and did not find it relating to this particular item. Perhaps you could be kind enough to link it directly for us?

In the meantime, let me quote my own example of a problem statement by Barry Setterfield, this one from a post under his name in this forum just last year:

From an archived post dated 3/11/2002 by Barry Setterfield:

Here, Barry clearly states that there is a variety of mass that does not respond macroscopically as mass. Taken at its face value, this is an incredibly wrong statement, one that to anyone knowledgeable about the nature of mass and energy and their relationships comes off as far off the mark as saying that a best fit line that hits none of the data points can have a correlation coefficient of one.

 

I don't wonder that Setterfield seeks to distance himself from his pre-1987 papers. But it is Setterfield's respondibility, not Day's, nor Peter's, nor mine, nor anyone else's responding to Setterfield. In 1981 when Setterfield published his ill-considered statistical analysis, he was a man. Perhaps it is true that he was under pressure to publish, but he was a man with a man's respondibilities, and it is as a man that Setterfield was, and is, responsible for his 1981 putlication.

Day, like anyone else, is perfectly entitled to criticize Setterfield's work, whether from 1981 or 1987 or 2003. You are free to frankly and honestly respond. A response, however, chiding Day's frank criticism of Setterfield's 1981 work as out of date is neither of those. Day would be out of date if he had claimed to be criticizing the statistical treatment of Setterfield's later work while actually treating only his 1981 paperHe did not do so. Day criticized Setterfield's 1981 paper to show how silly its statistical treatment was It is a clear and accessible argument plainly suggesting that the author of the 1981 garbage cannot be taken seriously in his later work.

You might Wish Day had discussed Setterfield's later work, but Day did not pretend to do so, nor was he obliged to do so. Your only reasonable response is that the Barry Setterfield of 1987 and later is frankly not the incompetent Barry Setterfield of 1981. Eat your humble pie. It is not Day's or any other critic's fault that Setterfield published material below amateurish standards in 1981. Like it or not, this was Setterfield's first "scientific" impression. As you know it's often hard to live down a bad first impression; but if you give one (as Setterfield most assuredly did here) it's YOUR responsibility to live it down by subsequent establishment of your reputation. That doesn't happen by cutting down those who criticize you based upon what you have done previously to earn your ill fame.

Really, Helen, this embarrassing whining has to stop! In response to critics like Day, why can't you and Setterfield, instead of making pat excuses about pressure to publish, or attacking reviewers, simply and frankly respond to Day to the effect that "Barry blew it in 1981. He recognizes that his failure to catch that .9999+ correlation coefficient for manifestly scattered data was a stupid lapse on Setterfield's part, and that critics are right to point out his error. . But then he could ask that his subsequent work be considered his mature product."

He isn't entitled to leave his past behind any more than any of the rest of us is. His past errors might still be ridiculed; but at least audiences will have reason to think that he has learned from them and renounced them rather than simply wishing that they hadn't happened.

By the way, Helen, it's also very shameful for you to cal Aardasma's analysis "dishonest" in a post with out then and there demonstrating not only that it was wrong, but that Aardasma knew it was wrong. It is true that you did provide some reasons in a subsequent post for believing Aardasma's analysis to have been wrong. I'm not going to discuss the merrits of your criticisms now, since this thread is tangled enough. I'm glad to see, though, that you have taken to making substantive criticism.

 

>>>>>>Peter101. The statistical crits of Day are nonsense because they are taken from the
earlier papers before all the data was in.<<<<<<<

That is not a valid or intelligent response, Helen. Day's criticism points out that Setterfield did not understand the concept of correlation coefficient and what it means to have the coefficient equal to 1.0. That misunderstanding on Setterfield's part does not depend on the number of points or whether all the data is in yet, contrary to your claim. Setterfield's later attempts to avoid commenting on this issue suggests that Setterfield now understands his mistake but prefers not to admit it or talk about it. Helen, I suspect that you do not understand his mistake and that you also do not understand how devastating it is to his attempts to be taken seriously. But even more damaging are the problems that result when you and Setterfield try to avoid responsibility for the mistake by blaming others for being critical and failing to handle the problem in a mature fashion. It is not good nor ethical to deny such a problem or to blame others for what Setterfield himself should be taking responsibility for. I have known several scientists to own up to a problem and admit that they have made a mistake. This is much better than denial because it does not permanently impair a person's reputation. The scientific community is forgiving of mistakes but not so forgiving of attempts to slide out of resposibility for mistakes.

I am still interesting in hearing from Setterfield as to whether or not he takes responsibility for his statistical mistakes as pointed out by Day. What say you, Barry?

 

>>>>>So yes, Aardsma's article was much less than honest.<<<<<

But you have not shown what, if anything, was wrong with the actual contents of the article. It is a fairly simple article and I read it. It weights the data points differently according to the size of the error bars associated with each point. In other words, it gives less weight to those data points that have large error and more weight to those points with very little error. This was done in a systematic and rigorous fashion. When that is done, the result is that change in the speed of light over time is not significantly different from zero. In other words the idea is not proven that the speed of light has decayed any at all. For you to argue against that, Helen, you at least have to discuss the issue, and not just assert that the article was less than honest.

 

Helen wrote: "Lambert Dolphin and Alan Montgomery refuted the Aardsma material here:
http://www.ldolphin.org/cdkgal.html
and here: http://www.ldolphin.org/cdkalan.html"


Helen, the first link above contains absolutely no mention of the Aardsma material and neither is it mentioned in the list of references at the end of the article. Please be more careful with your descriptions of things.

 

Helen,

As a christian, you really ought to use great care in these discussions and write only what is true and accurate. Here are a couple of examples of carelessness on your part, over the last few days:

1. Helen writes: "The Day nonsense has been refuted on the web, as you can reference at his website: www.setterfield.org."

No, this is not correct. Setterfield did post a discussion regarding Day's critique, but it did not address Day's critical comments about Setterfield's use of statistics.

2. "Barry's use of statistics was defended by professional government statistician A. Montgomery."

No Helen, there was no defense by Montgomery of Barry's use of statistics. What Montgomery did was a new analysis that never once mentioned Barry's use of statistics. The best that can be said in favor of your man is that Montgomery's conclusions were supportive of Barry's conclusions, but not because Montgomery agreed with Barry's statistical methods. Surely you can understand the difference in what you said and what I am saying.

Don't you want to retract these false comments as given above? It will help your credibility.

 

Aardsma's conclusions are based on his choice to use weights on the data points inversly proportionate to the error bars for the data points. Deciding to avoid using this technique will give a different answer, and it does not matter that you do it seven times!

It is not necessary to review all that statistical stuff, anyone can view the data directly on the chart and ponder this question:

Is the data consistent with a gradually improving precision in determining the speed of light, for light speed that has in fact never varied? Of course it is.

Is the data consistent with a gradually slowing of the speed of light, along the lines proposed by Barry Setterfield? It is also consistent with that.

But the data does not compel us accept that hypothesis, by a long shot!

Hence, we need to seek for evidence above and beyond this data to decide the question. Such as astronomical observation.

Astronomical observation data suggests there has been no change in the speed of light since creation.

Barry takes pains to develop his theory in more and more detail to explain why we cannot see any such evidence. But he cannot escape one fact: His theory maps a mere 6000 + orbits of earth around the sun into a 13 billion year history of the universe. Doing so absolutely requires orbits appear slowed drastically to the point of being even frozen to our view as we look to distant galaxies. The distant galaxies demonstrate standard galactic orbit speeds for their contituent stars, no slowing with distance is observed at all. The cepheid variables of the Andromeda galaxy swell and contract in the same rhythms as if gravity were working normally there, not slowed in any way. These things lead me to believe that if our telescopes were capable of observing an "earth" rotating around a "sun" in these galaxies, it would see that earth rotating once a year, not slowed in the least.

Your comment about the "difficulty" in drawing the line between different kinds of mass only serves to illustrate that they all act the same macroscopically. It has nothing to do with the wrongness of Barry's statement that there are different kinds of macroscopic responses from different kinds of mass. It occurs to me that your confusion about this issue is related to the fact you don't see how devestatingly final the arguments against any young earth rescuing cdk theory from astronomical observation actually are.

 

Barry's mapping of the 6000 year timeline into the observational 13+ billion year history of the universe is explicitely laid out for all to see in this chart to which you posted a link yourself in another thread:


http://www.setterfield.org/ccchron/barrychron.html#tablethree

Do you plan to revise the chart soon, since apparantly it is no longer accurate? If so, I hope you understand why its hard to keep up with the changes. This was posted quite recently.

 

Helen wrote:

No on both counts. Setterfield has the same opportunities--and the same responsibilities--as anyone mastering his youthful foibbles. The way that is done in saience, as well as most of the rest of the adult world, is by making accombplished sufficiently distinguished so that people will forget (or maybe even forgive) youthful mistakes. Complaining about those who bring up his past won't do it in science any more than elsewhere. To use a different metaphor, you and he have to learn to roll with the punches.

As for your complaint that Setterfield's science has to be perfect, that's just laughable. The criticism here is of his claimed .9999+ correlation coefficient for manifestly scattered data. That's not an "imperfection". That's a mistake the likes of which has probably never been published by anyone in the scientific literature anywhere. Few freshmen receiving passing grades in statistics would make such an "imperfection." Perhaps Peter is right and you really do not understand the magnitude of his blunder. But in any case, he'd easily live it down if he had actually done some uneqivocally good-quality science since then. Unfortunately he hasn't. He has no good scientific reputation to counter the bad one he earned in his youth.

From those letters one might gather, assuming, absurdly, that they are factual and unbiased accounts of what really happened, is that Aardasma showed poor manners in not informing Dolphin of his visit to SRI executives. The letters contain nothing even suggesting dishonesty on Aardasma's part, and it is disappointing to hear you slander anyone based upon them. I say "at most" because I cannot see how Aardasma owed Dolphin a courtessy callOne is not reqired to be nice. I would have preferred it had Aardasma informed Dolphin either before or concurrent with his discussion with Dolphin's supervisor (somewhere up the chain of command). Certainly what Aardasma did burnt some bridges to Dolphin, but Dolphin is not, nor was owed bridges to Aardasma or me or anyone else, and anyway bridg-burning isn't dishonesty, although claiming instances of it to be so is so.

 

It is quite interesting to consider how Helen and Barry have handled my inquiry into the criticism voiced on the Internet by their critic Robert? Day. A few days ago, I quoted Day as follows and then below the quote, gave the link where I found it. The quote is:

"The final blow to Setterfield's credibility is his statistical analysis of the results, given in Appendix 3, in which he discards 3 of the 41 data points shown in an earlier table, and claims a coefficient of determination r2 of "1 to nine significant figures, indicating a near perfect fit to the data" (emphasis added). As anyone with even the most basic knowledge of analysis will know (and as Setterfield will later learn the hard way), a coefficient of determination of 1 can only be realized if the data points lie precisely on the curve in question, yet Setterfield shows a pathetic ignorance of this fact by following the above claim with, "All told, 17 values were above the curve and 21 below, the r2 value indicating a perfectly balanced distribution of the cluster of points as well as close proximity to the curve."

In fact, as Setterfield openly admits, not a single data point of the 38 considered lay on the curve, yet this does not prevent him from claiming a perfect correlation."
--------------------------------------------------

If we fast forward to today, it is clear that Helen and Barry don't want to discuss the above criticism and will do almost anything to avoid a discussion of it. But before reaching that point yesterday, they threw out some distractions behind them like a fighter pilot throwing out flares to misguide an attacking missile. It should have been obvious to them, who made the criticism, when it was made and also what Helen and Barry did in the past to either refute the criticism or do decide not to answer it. But they failed to inform me of any of this, in response to my quote above. Instead what they did is to send out flares of distraction that had nothing to do with the above criticism. I don't remember the order of these "flares" but one of them was the claim that Montgomery defended Barry's use of statistics. That of course, was hogwash. Montgomery did no such thing. The second flare of distraction was to claim that Barry had refuted Day's criticism in a post on the Internet. That too was hogwash. Then there were other flares of a less blatant nature, which can be seen by looking back at the post. Finally this week, we have arrived at the moment of truth. With all exits blocked, Helen and Barry simply claim that they are not interested in discussing Day's criticism. It is too old, they say. I think it is clear that neither of them are handling the matter responsibly and in the best standards of science. Very well, it is obvious to everyone, it seems.