Because I didn’t already have enough to do over the weekend, I decided to take a look at what appears to be the first substantial article in the new Answers Research Journal, an online, peer-reviewed, technical journal for creationists.
Why, you may ask, was I reading such an article? Well, as the original Nature story stated, “those without a science background, including some policy-makers, may not be able to judge the difference in value of a paper in ARJ and a genuine science journal.” Although I am a PhD-trained scientist, the sheer magnitude of scientific knowledge out there means that I’m a relative novice on most scientific topics, and my article of choice from ARJ – Catastrophic Granite Formation: Rapid Melting of Source Rocks, and Rapid Magma Intrusion and Cooling – addresses topics that are about as far as I can get from my research specialty (physiology). Thus, coming at this without any real knowledge of geology, I wanted to see whether I could be convinced that such an article could pass itself off as “scientific”.
(Readers, beware – this is a lengthy entry.)
The first thing I noticed as I started reading the article was that my eyes began to glaze over. As I read about “waning magmatic activity”, “fluid-absent melting”, “enhanced fracture permeabilities”, and “deformation-assisted melt segregation”, I realized that my mind was wondering because I initially had very little idea what the author was talking about. While the author’s appeal to terminology and concepts outside my area of competence revealed my ignorance of matters geological, it also gave the article an air of authority that is typical of practically any recent scientific article. At first glance, therefore, the article gives the appearance of scientific authenticity, as the author’s command of the subject matter seems warranted, at least to the uninitiated. So far, so good.
As I continued, I couldn’t help thinking that the article read more like a review than an original research submission. As far as I can tell, the author has contributed no new observations or experimental results in the paper; he has only re-interpreted existing findings and theories within the framework of a 6000-7000 year-old creation story. One can imagine such a paper appearing in a “viewpoints” (or similar) section of a typical mainstream scientific journal; this of course begs the question, why wasn’t the article submitted as an opinion or review piece and published in just such a journal, where it could be subjected to peer review within the mainstream scientific community?
Reading on, I started to get suspicious. On page 12, the author explains that the geological activity that he is studying consists of four components: melting, segmentation, ascent, and emplacement. After discussing magma principles and processes for a page and a half, he then explains some of what he believes to be the evidence that each of these four processes can occur not only within the millions of years that has hitherto been envisaged, but also within the 6000-7000 years of literal biblical creationism.
The discussion of melting, for example, which spans approximately half of one page (the first column of page 14), covers the important factors that influence the melting process, particularly the presence of heating via underlying magmas. (Stay with me here if you can.) Nothing seems to be out of order – to this non-geologist, the factors implicated in melting appear to be relatively innocuous. However, after having described the four processes and how they could conceivably take place on a time frame on the order of thousands of years (as opposed to millions), the author’s brief summary of the melting process (in the second column of page 17) includes a factor that was not included in the preceding description of the process. Here we find the real source of heat driving the melting process.
So what is this mystery factor, responsible for speeding up the whole melting process such that it can occur within the allowable creationist time frame? Let me quote directly from the article:
As suggested by Woodmorappe (2001), the required timescale for partial melting is not incompatible with the 6,000–7,000 year biblical framework for earth history because a very large reservoir of granitic melts could have been generated in the lower crust in the 1,650 years between Creation and the Flood, particularly due to residual heat from an episode of accelerated nuclear decay during the first three days of the Creation Week (emphasis mine).
(So that the reader can be aware of sources, the Woodmorappe paper referred to in this quote was published in the journal TJ. A quick Internet search reveals that the present title of this journal is the Journal of Creation. Not exactly a mainstream journal.)
Here, then, we see the real reason for the increased rate of melting – the residual heat generated from an episode of accelerated nuclear decay.
What does this mean? Well, creationists appear to have a major gripe with the technique of radioisotope dating within mainstream science. (The present paper hints at this when, at the bottom of the first column on page 12, the author writes of the conventional millions-of-years-to-do-anything-geologically-meaningful perspective: “Of course, such estimates are claimed to be supported by radioisotope dating.”) As a Creation Research Society article explains, the relative distribution of uranium isotopes on the earth is difficult to mesh with a 6000-7000 year old planet. “To justify the young earth viewpoint, it is logically correct that the rocks may have been created already in this state of equilibrium, with no time needed to reach that state. However, a more natural explanation seems to be provided by accelerated radioactive decay” (emphasis mine). Young-earth creationists postulate that the radioactive decay process that we observe today has not operated at the same rate throughout earth’s history – at some point, some cataclysmic event happened to speed it up so that it merely looks like the earth is much older than it really is.
This sounds fishy to me. As I understand it, radioisotope dating is based on the widely held assumption that radioactive decay rates have been constant throughout earth’s history. I don’t think you’ll find many mainstream scientists challenging this assumption. However, as I understand it, the author of the ARJ article has smuggled in the dubious assumption of accelerated decay rates, thereby making room for his assertion that the geological activity of interest could have happened on a much faster timescale than mainstream scientists have otherwise thought possible. It seems odd that one should need to import such an unconventional assumption in order to make the data fit a pre-existing framework. It sounds a lot like the data is being made to fit a foregone conclusion (young-earth creationism), rather than following the usual method of drawing conclusions from the data and the associated (sound) assumptions.
What is one to make of all of this? Although I only made it half way through, the article looks scientific – plenty of referencing, impressive terminology, and even lots of pretty pictures and diagrams. The paper sounds scientific – previous work is mustered in order to put forward a hypothesis, and alternative interpretations of existing data are offered.
However, the fact remains that, even though I don’t know an awful lot of geology, it took little work to uncover what looks to me to be a shifty assumption, one that mainstream scientists would reject as unnecessary and ill-founded. Would I have picked this up had I not had any scientific training? Possibly not. But perhaps this is why scientists need to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with creationists, so that those who are not well informed on matters scientific can become aware of attempts (potentially on both sides) to substitute sound evidence and logical argumentation with spurious assumptions and underhanded methods.
Thanks for posting this. I forwarded it on to my department (Geosciences) and it received a lot of interest. Admittedly, I haven’t had a chance to read the paper in detail, but I was shocked by what I read when skimming through it. It’s a complete disregard for the scientific method.
Hi Nicholas,
Thanks for your comment. I would be very interested to hear what geologists, and others much more knowledgeable about such matters, think of the original paper.
The funniest aspect of ARJ articles is that authors use scientifically established knowledge to build up their religious interpretation. This makes their theories more unconviceable to routine scientists. It wld be better if they should begin from vaccum and build up theories on their own evidences than the picking up the established ones. the present articles does not even ‘look’ or ‘sound’ like science. I thank for initiating such forum.
Hi Kuljeet,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that the attempt in this particular ARJ article to force geological data into a pre-conceived framework of understanding (religiously or otherwise informed) is dubious. However, it does raise the interesting question of how scientific theories and data are (and should be) related. While data without a theory is meaningless, and a theory without data is blind, the relationship between data and theory seems to me to be not an altogether straightforward one.
I’m not sure that one could expect creationists to begin from a vacuum – after all, none of us operates in a vacuum.
Pete – wonderful! Thanks for taking the time to inform on this.
One of the things that irritates me most about this kind of thing is the sheer hypocrisy of it: the anti-science stance that uses the rhetoric of science for its own ends, whether that be in the presentation and discourse, or by resort to data and theories so far out from the science mainstream, but which can be conveniently shoe-horned into whatever is being ‘argued’.
I do, however, question the endorsement of an ongoing dialogue with creationists; there’s no point; these people can’t be reached; but they know exactly what they are doing, as the Intelligent Design movement exemplifies – they need people to remain ignorant of how science really operates; so they can get away with presenting as though they are scientific.
Dialogue, which should include exposure of such tactics, is best conducted with those vulnerable to them.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for stopping by. I certainly appreciate your point – productive dialogue is indeed predicated on both sides being open and receptive to the other. I suppose that I just haven’t yet reached the stage where you are, of conceding that there’s no point to engaging in dialogue and discussion with creationists.
Regardless of how infuriating we may find those who disagree with us to be, I would hope that science (scientists) will always be able to maintain a civil relationship with those who disagree with it (them). I wonder if part of the problem with the science-creationism divide is the feeling on the side of the creationists of being under siege, of fighting against an uncivilized scientific establishment – a behemoth to those on the outside – that is so invested in an evolutionary world view that it cannot tolerate disagreement, nor will it listen to alternative perspectives. Whatever the validity of these feelings, this of course does not allow creationists to react by adopting scientific-looking means to produce scientific-looking papers, especially if they adopt assumptions that are well outside the scientific mainstream. But if we mainstream scientists come across as aggressive and condescending and unable to brook dissent, we’re certainly not going to be able to find many receptive dialogue partners, creationist or otherwise.
If mainstream science and scientists truly trust in the validity of their methodology and their interpretation of the natural world, then it would seem that they have little to fear from those with whom they disagree. Openness and civility from scientists may well allow our conversation partners to relax their siege mentality a little, thereby allowing real and frank discussion and exchange – the type that I still hold out hope for – to take place.
Creationists are sneaky buggers and I agree that they know exactly what they’re doing. One of their anti-evolution websites used to feature one of my papers (about molecular evolution!) as evidence for intelligent design / creationism – until I publicised the fraud on my blog and they were forced to take it down.
Here are some links to the story of the misuse of my research and their subsequent deletion of my paper from their website for anyone who’s interested.
Hi Cath,
Thanks for providing the links to your story. Your experience is a sober reminder of the lengths some people will go to in order to propagate a particular view of things, no matter what the data may suggest.