Lawsuit: CSUN Scientist Fired After Soft Tissue Found On Dinosaur Fossil

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http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/07/24/scientist-alleges-csun-fired-him-for-discovery-of-soft-tissue-on-dinosaur-fossil/

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Attorneys for a California State University, Northridge scientist who was terminated from his job after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops fossil have filed a lawsuit against the university.
While at the Hell Creek Formation excavation site in Montana, researcher Mark Armitage discovered what he believed to be the largest triceratops horn ever unearthed at the site, according to attorney Brad Dacus of Pacific Justice Institute.
Upon examination of the horn under a high-powered microscope back at CSUN, Dacus says Armitage was “fascinated” to find soft tissue on the sample – a discovery Bacus said stunned members of the school’s biology department and even some students “because it indicates that dinosaurs roamed the earth only thousands of years in the past rather than going extinct 60 million years ago.”
“Since some creationists, like [Armitage], believe that the triceratops bones are only 4,000 years old at most, [Armitage’s] work vindicated his view that these dinosaurs roamed the planet relatively recently,” according to the complaint filed July 22 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The lawsuit against the CSUN board of trustees cites discrimination for perceived religious views.
Armitage’s findings were eventually published in July 2013 in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
According to court documents, shortly after the original soft tissue discovery, a CSUN official told Armitage, “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!”.........

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@gungasnake,

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“We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!”

I guess you aint heard, eh? Atheists are the most tolerant creatures on the planet. It is only religious people who are intolerant.

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@gungasnake,

The lawsuit was filed almost a year ago and has gone nowhere.

Here is an update from Nov.
https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/mark-armitage-update-05-nov-2014/

He wasn't fired for finding soft tissue.

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http://blog.drwile.com/?p=13176

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....Does this conclusively show that the Triceratops horridus is not millions of years old? No. The lab might not have been able to completely isolate the fossil’s original bioapatite, so the result may have contamination in it. However, I think it adds to the case that the bone is not millions of years old. When you also consider the fact that many other dinosaur bones (and other things that are supposed to be millions of years old) are dated as only being 22,000-41,000 years old, you have to at least conclude that there is something wrong somewhere. Either the carbon-14 dating system is not as robust as some want to believe, or the fossils are not as old as some want to believe......

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@gungasnake,

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Either the carbon-14 dating system is not as robust as some want to believe, or the fossils are not as old as some want to believe......

Or more likely it could be that blog posters don't understand the first thing about carbon-14 dating.

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I wouldn't really expect somebody to WIN a lawsuit like this one. I mean sooner or later the evolosers with the financial muscle of the whole university system behind them and the ability to intimidate ordinary people which we've seen, will be very hard to win such a case against.

Nonetheless it's interesting that things like this go on.

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@gungasnake,

It is always interesting when creationists are hit in the face with the fact that they aren't doing science.

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@parados,

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He wasn't fired for finding soft tissue

Of course not. The blog post you cited suggests it was because of his religious views, not the finding itself, which is all his lawsuit claims:

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Armitage acknowledges that he did that by keeping his views on the age of the fossil out of the paper. Sneaky. He published his bare findings, and it was only afterwards that he promoted his young-Earth interpretation.

Armitage freely admits that he often engaged students in conversations, giving his opinion on issues such as the age of the remarkably well-preserved cells in the triceratops horn. “To me, the obvious conclusion is they’re young. They can’t be 68 million years old,” he says.

In terms of getting his job back, those conversations might be Armitage’s undoing. [original emphasis]

What extremely tolerant atheist wouldn't fire the "sneaky" bastard? How DARE he state the "obvious" conclusion to be drawn from a paper he published.

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@layman,

Why didn't he include that conclusion in the paper he published if it was so obvious? Perhaps it's Armitage that was being sneaky or perhaps he committed fraud when he published without the conclusion.

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@parados,

Quote:

Or more likely it could be that blog posters don't understand the first thing about carbon-14 dating

.

But YOU do, eh, Parados? Do you disagree with the blogger? Do you think he is fabricating the findings of Dr Cherkinsky and statements of Dr. Martin?:

Quote:

Samples from the fossil were sent to Dr. Alexander Cherkinsky at the University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies for dating via the carbon-14 dating method. Since the current half-life of carbon-14 is “only” about 5,700 years, there should be no detectable levels of it in the original parts of the fossil, if the fossil is millions of years old. However, Dr. Cherkinsky’s lab found very detectable levels of carbon-14. In fact, there was so much carbon-14 in the fossil that it was given a date of 41,010 ± 220 years.2 This is well within the accepted range of carbon-14 dating, and it is actually younger than other carbon-14 dates reported in the scientific literature.

I had presented some carbon-14 dates of dinosaur bones during the debate, and in his rebuttal, the evolutionist (Dr. Robert Martin) said that the dates were obviously wrong because of contamination. During the Q&A session with the audience that followed the debate, one person asked how reliable dating methods are. Dr. Martin said very reliable. He specifically said that carbon-14 dating is accurate to within 100 years or so. I chimed in with, “Well, unless it is dinosaur fossils being dated. Then, of course, it’s completely useless.”

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@parados,

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...perhaps he committed fraud when he published without the conclusion.

You're actually serious, aren't you!? Factual findings shouldn't be published unless the logical implications are too? It's "fraud" for an experimenter not to give his personal conclusions!?

Heh, amazing.

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@layman,

I agree with Dr Martin. Contaminated sample show the age of the contamination not the age of the fossil. Farmerman has talked about this extensively.

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@layman,

Is the age of the fossil a finding or an opinion? It seems you want to argue both sides of the issue.

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@parados,

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I agree with Dr Martin.

About what? That a particular test was based on a contaminated sample? And this is known how, exactly?

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@parados,

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It seems you want to argue both sides of the issue

Why would it seem that way? Have you read the paper?:

“Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaur Triceratops horridus,” Acta Histochemica, 115(6):603–608, 2013

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@gungasnake,

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a discovery Bacus said stunned members of the school’s biology department and even some students “because it indicates that dinosaurs roamed the earth only thousands of years in the past rather than going extinct 60 million years ago.”

Hes going to lose his lawsuit and then be responsible to pay all the court costs. FOR WHAT PURPOSE?? Is this guy really that stupid??? because how and the hell will he prove that dumass statement???

We have Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossil waxes, carbonaceous goo, resin,tars, petrolea, and kerogen , all from proveably really old deposits. The makeup of the fossil "oft tissue" material has nothing to do with its geologic age. NOTHING.

Anyone who reads that article and thinks it has a skinnytilla of truth in it, needs to buy my "instant water" cubes

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@farmerman,

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Hes going to lose his lawsuit...how and the hell will he prove that dumass statement???

Not sure what you are thinking here, Farmer. Do you think he must prove that to win a discrimination suit?

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Anyone who reads that article and thinks it has a skinnytilla of truth in it...

Truth about what? The alleged motivation for firing him, you mean?

1 Reply

@layman,

All the samples sent to Cherkinsky"s lab were without context, documentation, field QA and any information on concordia. C14, by even being found, means that the Carbon was some sort of contamination, not part of the " big hair follicle"

C14 is a very robust application an NO other dinosaurs (except for the batch that were sent to Georgia TEch ) have ever been showing dumass dates like 20 and 40K ybp.

If thats the case, wed would probably see DNA or at least osteocalcin .

If he was fired for being a Creationist, I take it bck, he shouldnt be fored AS LONG AS HE TEACHES SCIENCE and not RELIGION at this public institution.

We have very good ways to determine the ages of these fossils. The contiguous overlying and underlying "boundary" formations of the HELL CREEK hve been iotoped to dewth using K/Ar/Ar, fission tracking on quartz and phosphate minerals, K/Ca, Rb/Sr, U/Pb (all of em), U/Th. All these techniques were done on the various components of VOLCANIC ASH that under and overlies the HEll Creek. The volcanic ash is a pretty good natural calendar (unless some folk dug down into the tween layers and then BURIED the damn lizard in the rock.
NOPE, the Hell Creek "timeclock" i between around 70 million to 66 million years old and anything found in-situ inside that "box of time" hs its calendar punched by isotopes.

We talk about this every so often yet gunga tries to come up with some new **** about this old ****.
ALL because scientists from UNC originally found "Soft tissue" buried within the crystal matrix of the sediments of the HEll Creek Formation bck in the early 2000's.

SAME **** , different day.

Cmon gung, try to follow the bouncing ball of science, you seem to be a bit of a totl science denialist.

ALLEY OOP will not be shown on NOVA

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@layman,

Quote:

Not sure what you are thinking here, Farmer. Do you think he must prove that to win a discrimination suit

At first, I didnt realize that this was the same old **** that gunga posted a year ago. As I then stated, the guy shouldnt be fired for being a Creationist unless it interferes with the policy of how science is presented in a public institution. USUALLY such intitutions follow the first Amendments provisos

ie
1The free exercise clause (and its not about doing squats)

2The ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE(thats wgat gets em in trouble as per Aguillard.

Thentruth to which I refer , is the "supposed science contained therein by the C14 scam"

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@farmerman,

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NO other dinosaurs (except for the batch that were sent to Georgia TEch ) have ever been showing dumass dates like 20 and 40K ybp

.

Without vouching for their accuracy, it has certainly been claimed that other instances have been found. See this paper, for example:

Mary H. Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, John R. Horner, and Jan K. Toporski, “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex,” Science, 307:1952-1955, 2005

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Lawsuit: CSUN Scientist Fired After Soft Tissue Found On Dinosaur Fossil

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