Carbon-14 dating Errors

Can any date be trusted when using Carbon-Dating?

I have read studies, papers and more, showing that Carbon-Dating can have an error rate of 200%

Here are just a few extracts from science journal that got my attention.

"The lower leg lower leg of the Fairbanks Creek mammoth had a radiocarbon age of 15,380 RCY, while its skin and flesh were 21,300 RCY." (Natural History 1949)

'Living mollusk shell were carbon dated as being 2,300 years old.' (Science 1963)

'A freshly killed seal was carbon dated as having died 1,300 years ago' (Antarctic Journal 1971)

"One part of Dima (a baby frozen mammoth) was 40,000, another part was 26,000 and the 'wood immediately around the carcass' was 9-10,000." (Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 1975)

'Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old.' (Science 1984)

"The two Colorado Creek, AK mammoths had radiocarbon ages of 22,850 ±670 and 16,150 ±230 years respectively." (Quaternary Research 1992)

"One part of the Vollosovitch mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years old and another part at 44,000." (Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 1975)

And one of my favorite extracts.

"No matter how 'useful' it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th-century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read." (Anthropological Journal of Canada 1981)


(working of notes I made, will go back to read entire articles and papers)

carbon dating is not the only dating method used, it's just the most popular/easy to understand
i think there are over a dozen dating methods, here straight from good old wikipedia

Radiocarbon dating - for dating organic materials
Dendrochronology - for dating trees, and objects made from wood, but also very important for calibrating radiocarbon dates
Thermoluminescence dating - for dating inorganic material including ceramics
Optically stimulated luminescence or optical dating for archaeological applications
Potassium–argon dating - for dating fossilized hominid remains

there are many more of course.
And those examples are the typical ones always brought up, it feels like saying "cars are never safe because one of them broke for no reason 22 years ago"

The method is not flawless, true, but carbon dating, combined with other methods gives us a very good idea of how old stuff is.

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

Have you actually read the papers or just copy pasted the extracts from some creationist website?

a reply to: OperationBlackRose
I also have to think lab techniques have become better since the 1960's and 70's because of issues like this. The science on radiocarbon dating is good, execution is the weak link.

originally posted by: inert
a reply to: OperationBlackRose
I also have to think lab techniques have become better since the 1960's and 70's because of issues like this. The science on radiocarbon dating is good, execution is the weak link.

What kind of date should I expect when someone carbon-dates me? And what excuse will they use if I am dated as being a few thousand years old?

I don't know if I really trust anything carbon dated or any of that crap to be honest. I just find it odd that every couple of weeks it seems like we find something that we never thought could have existed in that "time frame". If you ask me they are feeding us # to keep the $$ coming in.

originally posted by: OperationBlackRose
(Natural History 1949)
(Science 1963)
(Antarctic Journal 1971)
(Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 1975)
(Science 1984)
(Quaternary Research 1992)
(Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 1975)
(Anthropological Journal of Canada 1981)

Any papers from this century?

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

What's the other option? Believing every word written from the Bible literally?

I'll take science any day.

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

Well besides the fact that literally EVERY one of your sources are all old papers, published over 30 years ago, carbon-14 dating isn't even the only radiometric dating method being used.

Radiometric Dating - Modern Dating Methods

Also, carbon-14 dating only goes out to about 60,000 years. Other dating methods are much more reliable to detect ages much older. It would help if you actually READ and tried to understand science, instead of just latching onto whatever Creationist sound byte you can to try to discredit it.

What you've linked is like linking to a story about Gasoline being unsafe because it has lead in it.

Science advanced. It continues to advance. Your sources are from (at latest) 1985. Try to give us some sources that are a little less than 30 years old.

Most of you citations were for articles that are 40-50 years old. Yes, there were problems way back then.

As time moved forward, the ability to correctly interpret the results has improved, Is it perfect? No

This is just the regurgitation of the old information that creationists like to talk about and then close their minds to the possibility of evolution.

Perhaps evolution is part of Gods plan

a reply to: Krazysh0t
krazy shot? Do you see nothing wrong with the logic of your post?
Read it again........

a reply to: Quadrivium

Care to explain the errors in logic?

a reply to: Quadrivium

No, how about you enlighten me.

originally posted by: Swills
a reply to: OperationBlackRose

What's the other option? Believing every word written from the Bible literally?

I'll take science any day.

Where did the bible come in to this discussion?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: OperationBlackRose

Well besides the fact that literally EVERY one of your sources are all old papers, published over 30 years ago, carbon-14 dating isn't even the only radiometric dating method being used.

Radiometric Dating - Modern Dating Methods

Also, carbon-14 dating only goes out to about 60,000 years. Other dating methods are much more reliable to detect ages much older. It would help if you actually READ and tried to understand science, instead of just latching onto whatever Creationist sound byte you can to try to discredit it.

How is it then that when you take one object, let say #0001, and date it using all of the 6 above stated methods of dating, that you will get 6 different dates? That does not make sense. If I use six different rulers, (inch, mm, cubit, span etc.), I will get one measurement when converting it all to one system. I can not get 6 different measurements in inch or feet. That will prove that something does not work.

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

All dating methods have error ranges. If you have 6 different rulers all accurate to +/- some value then if they all independently correlate around a particular length then you can be pretty damn sure that this is an accurate measurement of the object.

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

There is this thing in science called "margin of error". No measurement in science is exact (including lengths), there is always an error that we cannot get rid of, and different testing methods produce different margins of error. It's pretty simple really. Even when measuring distance, there is a margin of error since you cannot tell if the end point EXACTLY lines up with the notch you are reading.

ETA: By the way, it would be bad science to use all six radiometric dating techniques on the same object since the ranges that they can safely measure are all different. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years while Rubidium has a half-life of 50 billion years. By the time one Rubidium half-life passed, all the carbon-14 would be LONG gone in that object.

Here's a suggestion, how about taking the time and thoroughly reading that entire wikipedia page I posted so you can educate yourself on how this process works and the differences between the different dating methods.

Regardless, it's a flawed method and many scientists agree. The main problem is you have no definitive standard to base your time line off of. If I'm in my kitchen filling up a bucket and you walk in 2 minutes into it or 10 the level will be different but you would never be able to pin point when I started. I could have started 2 years prior or 20 seconds prior to you showing up. a reply to: moebius

a reply to: OperationBlackRose

Typically the only ones who have issues with carbon dating are creationists.