a

. A blind test requires that the people making the measurements not know (be “blind” to) which of several specimens is the one of interest. For example, to measure a rock’s age by some radiometric technique, similar rocks—of different, but known, ages—must accompany the rock. Only after the measurements are announced are the technicians making the measurements told the history of any specimen. Subtle biases can enter the experimental procedure if persons with vested interests in the test’s outcome make the measurement or influence those who do. Blind tests ensure objectivity.

A special type of blind test commonly used in medicine is a “double-blind test.” Neither doctors nor patients know who receives the special treatment being tested. A random selection determines which patients receive the special treatment and which receive a placebo—something obviously ineffective, such as a sugar pill. Experienced medical researchers give little credibility to any medicine or treatment that has not demonstrated its effectiveness in a well-designed and rigorously executed double-blind test.

The Shroud of Turin, claimed to be the burial cloth of Christ, was supposedly dated by a blind test. Actually, the technicians at all three laboratories making the measurements could tell which specimen was from the Shroud. [Personal communication on 19 July 1989 with Dr. Austin Long who participated in the measurements.] The test would have been blind if the specimens had been reduced to unidentified carbon powder before they were given to the testing laboratories.

Radiometric dates that do not fit a desired theory are often thrown out by alleging contamination. Few ever hear about such tests. If those who object to a blind radiometric date have not identified the contamination before the test, their charges should carry little weight. Therefore, careful researchers should first objectively evaluate the possibility of contamination.

Humans are naturally biased. We tend to see what we want to see and explain away unwanted data. This applies especially to those proposing theories, myself included. Scientists are not immune to this human shortcoming. Many popular ideas within geology would probably never have survived had a critical age measurement been subjected to a blind test.

b

. John Woodmorappe, “Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 16, September 1979, pp. 102–129.

Robert H. Brown, “Graveyard Clocks: Do They Tell Real Time?” Signs of the Times, June 1982, pp. 8–9.

“It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock.’ ” William D. Stansfield, Science of Evolution (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), p. 84.

c

. “For some inexplicable reason, the nuclei of certain elements become unstable and spontaneously release energy and/or particles.” Stansfield, p. 82.

d

. Larry Vardiman et al., Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research, 2005), pp. 1–772.

For earlier work that showed that radioactive decay rates were much faster in the past, see:

“Lead and Helium Diffusion” on page 35.

Robert V. Gentry, “Variance of the Decay Constant over Geological Time,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 5, September 1968, pp. 83–84.

Robert V. Gentry, Creation’s Tiny Mystery, 2nd edition (Knoxville, Tennessee: Earth Sciences Associates, 1988), p. 282.

Paul Ramdohr, “New Observations on Radioactive Halos and Radioactive Fracturing,” Oak Ridge National Laboratory Translation (ORNL-tr-755), 26 August 1965, pp. 16–25.