Talk:Carbon dating gives inaccurate results

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Revert I

I reverted this:

1. Strictly speaking, this claim is true; radiocarbon dating can indeed yield bad results if one applies it to inappropriate samples or in an incompetent fashion. There is some discource on what is proper use, for example, varying ratios of C14/C12 can provide differing results, as can other factors, such as the time between death and decay. Raw carbon dates (BP) cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the level of atmospheric C14 has not been strictly constant during the span of time that can be radiocarbon dated. To assist in accuracy of results, raw radiocarbon dates are run through differant calebrations, meant to normalize results based on possible levels through history.
2. Another hotly contested issue is the possably subjective nature of determining which samples are "contaminated".

I think this has nothing to do with the creationist claim. They make really, really stupid mistakes, such as dating the shells of snails to find how old the snails are. Of course every method of measuring has weaknesses, but they are known to the experts. They know how to avoid them and when the error bars are high or low. The current responses are not optimal, for example the relation between raw carbon dates and age has to be mentioned. But I think this gives creationists too much credit. --tk (t) 10:19, 22 March 2006 (GMT)

Wasn't the reason why they got readings of the snails being hundreds of years old was because the snails' main carbon source was from limestone, which had very little C14 to begin with?--Mr A. 15:59, 22 March 2006 (GMT)

Yes. C-14 dating depends on the organisms taking in a certain amount of Carbon from the atmosphere, which plants do directly and which animals do through eating plants or eating plant eaters. The ocean throughs a spanner in the works because of what's known as the reservoir effect, which warps the process. Furthermore, mollusks that are getting most of the carbon from limestone are going to report back the age of the limestone, not their own age. --Suttkus 17:39, 23 March 2006 (GMT)

Revert II

I removed this response:

In response to the above response, radiocarbon dating of relatively young objects has been calibrated over time based on scientists' use of other techniques to corroborate their findings. Without calibration (which would not have been possible without an external reference point) the dating would have been unreliable. Based on limited means of corroboration and limited knowledge of relevant past events for older objects, there is no reason to believe that dating of these objects creates more than a presumption of age, which may be defeated as more information becomes known.

It doesn't seem to make any sense to me.--Mr A. 15:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

This is not true.

For example, trees C-dated to a certain age have ring counts compatible with the date.

Tree rings tell us how long the tree lived. Radiocarbon dating tells us how long ago it died. These measurements have no overlap. This statement is taken from the notion that radiocarbon dating has been calibrated with dendrochronology (which is true), but that doesn't mean that you can do it with a single tree. --76.202.226.195 21:16, 26 May 2008 (BST)