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

@layman,

So is his opinion of the age of the earth science?

@parados,

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So is his opinion of the age of the earth science?

I would guess that the basis of his belief about the age of the earth is more religious in nature. But that doesn't tell you much, per se. Some scientists "believe in" physics or evolution, or sociology, or whatever based on their religious beliefs.

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@layman,

Im sorry but I had not jumped on you when you called me slow and said my points were vacuous. I suppose I should have but I didnt doubt your sincerity at investigating this issue before. Now Im sure you are seeking to give Armitage a "pass" based upon worldviews.

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If Armitage only had sought publication for his "juried" paper (sans any contextual references and geology as it was), It was a clearly a METHODS paper and entirely justified to be published.

You have trouble understanding "Methods paper"? . Its a term of art of description only. NO Analyses of importance was mde since "soft tissue" occurences and reasons for existence were beyond his capability. Armitage was a SEM technician. He was NOT a pleontologist or a scientist of any training experience or other qualsthat gave him any spcial credibility .
When he and Anderson published the "Methods Paper" in Hitochemica Acta , it ws clearly "what we did on our summer break, what we discovered and how e prepped it for view, and the decriptions of the tissue.

ONLY LATER, when that paper was published an then Armitage had the C14 done, did he perp a fraud. He used his publication as a backhanded grab at some degree of credibility n mixed that together with bogus C14 analyses on Cretaceous Age fossils.

The Triceratops horn was clearly set in sediments that were in the 60 million year old neighborhoos. (ASH deposits were age dated and the fossil was embedded within thee layers. That throws ALL C14 data into a dumpster because the Sedimentary Radioisotopic data was following clear sed protocols and lb practices. ARMITAGE' did not.

So wehn he tried to bullshit his way into stating that the fossil was 40K years old, he was clearly talking out his ass.

All your diversionary references about gods are just that, diversions to try to bouy up your sunken credibility.

Since CAl is an "At-will" state and, as Adjunct faculty in microscopy, he was fuckin with science that he had no knowledge or credibility from which to "lecture students" about a "Young Earth"

AS a BOARD MEMBER of the CREATION "RESEARCH" INSTITUTE, Armitage's worldview and game plan was clearly understood by everyone except fools.
His frequent "lecturing" about areas in which hes unqualified, clearly puts the University at a disadvantage.
His lawsuit is a good idea because it gathers together the resources of ICR, Discovery Institute, and Several Evangelical colleges whose science departments are not regionally accredited, and plays out another DOVER (for Fed District 9) ,another Edwards v Aguillard, or the grndaddy of the "culture wars" the Daniels v Waters case which, while striking down the "Butler Laws " of Tennessee, actually created a "Separate but equal" concept of Bible Friendly Science .
ANy real scientist in the relevant fields of Pleo, geo, evo/devo paleoanthropology , isotope geochem, grees that there IS NO CONTROVERSY regarding the lck of validity of doing Crbon 14 nalyses of Mesozoic or Cenozoic fossils. Its a waste of money and the way we date thos gaes is with overlapping analyses of sediments that contain metamorphic or magmtic minerals within the the very sed layers of interest. There are several other non-isotopic methods that serve up accurate dates of these older seds. C14 isnt used. ITS INVALID and its a waste of research funds. EVERYONE EXCEPT THE CREATIONISTS KNOW THAT.
rmitage is an avoed Creationist. His worldview is one of a Young Earth Creationist. HE wants his world to be less than 10k years old. He will do anything to fake these data to get the "OPINION" he wants. His conclusions are Not based on real science. They are based upon manipulation of sample in order to get it to come up with numbers that Armitage finds "Creation Friendly".

There is no controversy of methodology among scientists for C14 (there are more lists of where C14 is NOT a valid technique and Age dating of mesozoic fossils is just one of them).
Anybody who understans isotope dating would have red flagged the whole thing from the get-go. It appears the lab was not clued in as to the frauds going on because they also did their own Acetic acid soak, which probably added the necessary C14 to the mix as prt of the lab "cleanup.

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@layman,

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recent analyses seem to confirm that original soft tissues possibly original molecules do exist in incompletely fossilized of extinct animals, including dinosaurs.

Thi is incorrect in that SCheitzer has proposed a series of surface chemical reactions with iron ions as the adsorbant and the lack of crystal structure is sorta like the matrix of AMBER (which is found all the way from the early Paleozoiv=c to the mid Cenooic in approximately the same configuration. Finding soft tissue structures and erythrocytes of Cenozoic fossils will provide a comprison of the chemistry through the 66 to at least 40 million years ago)

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@layman,

Either his beliefs have a scientific basis that can be proven or it doesn't. Which is it?
If they don't have a scientific basis, the he was correct to leave them out of his paper. But that leaves us with him introducing religious beliefs into a science class which subjects him to being fired for cause since he has moved outside his teaching role.

If they do have a scientific basis then we are left with him intentionally misrepresenting the age of a fossil in his paper.

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@farmerman,

Farmer, I've seen this rant before. If you are saying that he could, and, in your view, should, lose his lawsuit, fine. That's your opinion. You may well turn out to be right.

That said, "at will" does not mean "for any damn reason you feel like." Civil rights statutes and the constitution itself, prohibits discrimination by government on certain grounds (racial, religious, etc.).

As I understand it, an employer can have 20 or 30 "good" reasons for firing someone and, if a firing is validly based on those grounds, fine. You can fire a black guy anytime UNLESS you fire him BECAUSE he is black. So that's the issue. Having 20 good reasons for firing a guy does not help at all if you base your decision on an improper reason.

He is alleging that the stated reasons were improper. Maybe he is right, too. I don't claim to know. Maybe you do...are you in touch with his lawyer, or anything? Do you have some inside knowledge about that issue?

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@parados,

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Either his beliefs have a scientific basis that can be proven or it doesn't. Which is it?

Parados, are you ever going to quit beating your wife?

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@layman,

The actual comparison question would be "Either you have a wife or you don't, which is it?" Your attempt to make my question leading is the only logical fallacy here.

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@layman,

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He is supposedly "sneaky" because he "published his bare findings, and it was only afterwards that he promoted his young-Earth interpretation." As if he were REQUIRED to disclose his (utterly intolerable) "young-Earth interpretation" BEFORE he published a paper. To do otherwise is to expose a person of low character ("sneaky").

Its either mendacity or vacuity of which you are master. It wouldnt have been "sneaky" if he only publsihed the methods paper in the journal. Do you, in all your simple trusting mind really believe that his follow -on C14 analyses were not pre planned as a separate but jointed trick to show that "EVEN CREATIONISTS CAN GET PUBLISHED IN PEER REVIEW JOURNALS"?

Are you that naive about these folks?

ICR has always been seking to get their member workd published and as such to "fool their way into some kind of crdeibility". There is another geologist, Steve Austen , who is also a member of the ICR board and the Discovery Institute Bord. Austen has always published his "Transform pleiochroism of Polonium 210 isotopes in Mica" as a solid science "methods paper" Then, after publishing, he turned on the Journal Nature by renaming the feature "POLONIUM HALOS-which are actually a proof of a young earth" The ICR sits around yukking it up because theyve pulled one over a staid publication and its ed board (usten was an unknown post doc who ws earning his chops as a new Creationist and fooled the Journal--ONCE)

Everything he publihes now is either by ICR or is self publihed (kinda like Armitge)

These guys are all notorious frauds who re trying their damndest to make up a controversy here none exits.

SO lymn, you fit right in mong em. Even though you profess no knowledge of the relevant sciences ( Your skill set is unknown to me). But the common sense dissection of Armitages methods and his entire reliance on C14 (rther than a K/Ar or Th/Pb (which is just dandy for bone and apatite).
He didnt use standard accepted rdioisotopes, and dont you believe he was being objectively dispassionte (Otherwise, hy didnt he volunteer to do some other isotopic dating methods??) Most scientists like overlapping data, not exclusionary tricks.

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@farmerman,

Farmer, unlike you, I did not enter this thread to promote a view (pro or con) about the age of the earth. My personal opinion is that any claim of a 10,000 year old earth is preposterous. But that's not the topic I am, or have been, discussing, and that's not what this thread is about, as I understand it.

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Are you that naive about these folks?

Well, ya know, I am OFTEN asked that question. Like, for example, when I run into a 9-11 "truther" and fail to quickly agree with him.

I'm not interested in that "controversy." I don't, haven't, and won't, follow all of Armitage's blogs, affiliations, publishers, etc. I don't care if he's a creationist or not, per se. I am not obsessed with that, as you seem to be.

You seem to spot a "creationist" at every street corner, going so far as to insinuate that PZ Myers, of all people, must be one, even.

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@layman,

Losin ground eh?

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Quote:
Well, ya know, I am OFTEN asked that question. Like, for example, when I run into a 9-11 "truther" and fail to quickly agree with him

At least try to stay within the topic herein. Waht you do in the prvacy of your own mind is none of my business until you try to bolster a controversy that has no "legs" but is supported by a worldview and no data and evidence.

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@parados,

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Either his beliefs have a scientific basis that can be proven or it doesn't. Which is it?

Parados, do you happen to believe that ANY scientific theory, in ANY field (physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, or whatever) can ever be PROVEN? Apparently you do. But that doesn't make your question a proper one which doesn't assume unsubstantiated conclusions.

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If anyone is actually interested in the legal issues involved here, I came across an article which addresses some of those issues in greater depth than the article cited in the original post. But, for some additional background, I will first quote from an article written by Mary Schweitzer:

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"Blood from Stone: How Fossils Can Preserve Soft Tissue: Mounting evidence from dinosaur bones shows that, contrary to common belief, organic materials can sometimes survive in fossils for millions of years"
By Mary H. Schweitzer Scientific American, Evolution » December 2010

They couldn’t be cells, I told myself. The bone slice was from a dinosaur that a team from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., had recently uncovered—a Tyrannosaurus rex that died some 67 million years ago—and everyone knew organic material was far too delicate to persist for such a vast stretch of time.

For more than 300 years paleontologists have operated under the assumption that the information contained in fossilized bones lies strictly in the size and shape of the bones themselves. The conventional wisdom holds that when an animal dies under conditions suitable for fossilization, inert minerals from the surrounding environment eventually replace all of the organic molecules...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blood-from-stone/

So, there's the conflict with the (at least then) prevailing scientific view about fossilization, etc. Now, from this other article:

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...The scientist, whose analysis of the Triceratops horn was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, is also an evangelical creationist, and claimed that the finding supports the view that Earth is 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs roamed the planet around 4,000 years ago. While the university claims the scientist, Mark Armitage, was fired for allowing his religion to interfere with his work, Armitage is suing the University for wrongful dismissal on the basis of violation to freedom of speech and academic freedom...

According to Armitage, the preservation of such cells is a scientific impossibility if the dinosaur really walked the Earth over 66 million years ago. On this basis, he felt it was not unreasonable to open discussion with colleagues and students about the implications of such a finding being that the creationist perspective is correct and that dinosaurs existed much later than mainstream science maintains.

Terminating an employee because of their religious views is completely inappropriate and illegal,” said Attorney Brad Dacus of Pacific Justice Institute. “But doing so in an attempt to silence scientific speech at a public university is even more alarming...

Armitage made the ‘unscientific’ mistake of assuming that the dinosaur must be only several thousand years old simply because the process in which the cells were preserved was not understood by him.

The legal case surrounding Armitage’s dismissal opens up many important questions about academic freedom, whether science and religion can ever truly coexist in harmony, and what knowledge may be unravelled by the discovery of preserved cells in the remains of dinosaurs.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/scientist-dismissed-after-soft-tissue-found-dinosaur-fossil-001906#ixzz3aLnjxMXR

So those are some of the issues raised by each side. How does "the law" address and resolve these competing interests? I don't know. I guess we'll find out if it goes to trial.

But it may not. Often suits like these are settled with a cash payment to the plantiff, accompanied by a denial by the defendant of any wrong-doing on his part.

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@parados,

Quote:

So is his opinion of the age of the earth science?

From what I know about the history of science (and I certainly don't claim to be an expert in that field) these types of "anomalies" come up frequently. When they do, it is not unusual for many differing hypotheses to be proposed to "explain" it. Often some of these hypotheses seem to be, at least at first glance, highly speculative and unlikely. From what I know, these hypotheses are then examined on their merits, and there is no requirement that such hypotheses be "accepted science" BEFORE they are tendered for consideration.

It is all part of the "scientific process," and is certainly "science" in that sense. "Science" purports to maintain a spirit of open inquiry and discussion in such cases, and tries not to reject possible explanations on the basis of "dogma." Whether this always occurs is another question. Often the only "result" (and least for long periods) is that several different hypotheses are accepted by differing "schools" and no general consensus is achieved.

When some evidence crops up that raises a question such as "this is inconsistent with our assumptions about how old these samples are thought to be," then one possible explanation is always: "Well, then, maybe they're not as old as we thought them to be."

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@layman,

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When some evidence crops up that raises a question such as "this is inconsistent with our assumptions about how old these samples are thought to be," then one possible explanation is always: "Well, then, maybe they're not as old as we thought them to be."

What one chooses to call "science" may, within reasonable limits, depend on one's personal views and preferences. But I think almost everyone would agree that an UNSCIENTIFIC response to this suggestion (i.e., "maybe they're not as old as we thought them to be") would be: "Shut up. You are prohibited from suggesting that possibility."

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@layman,

no, he should just be laughed at in a public forum since the correct results are really the basis from which we derive things like nuclear power,or different energy shells in the orbitals, or atomic clocks .
All these methods have been nicely calibrated by folks over the years. Decay constants have been in place since the mid 60's and are periodically adjusted (even something in the 6th decimal place is re-reviewed for accurcy and repeatability)

SO for you to suggest that there is even a scintilla of fact supporting Armitage is idiocy (hence my new classification for you).
I suppose reading a physics text on radioactive decay would be too much to ask since your mind is well made-up to deny that Armitage was acting in a fraudulent manner .

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@farmerman,

SIMILAR THOUGHT< I JUST HAD TO RESPOND TO LAYMANS IPSEDIXITISM

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When some evidence crops up that raises a question such as "this is inconsistent with our assumptions about how old these samples are

You are convinced that there is merit to ICR's position (I have to lump Armitage with his real missionary organization)
no, he should just be laughed at in a public scientific forum since the correct results (measured over and over by competent labs using correct methods) are really a part of the bases from which we derive things like nuclear power,or different energy shells in the orbitals, or atomic clocks .
All these methods have been nicely calibrated by folks over the years. Decay constants have been in place since the mid 60's and are periodically adjusted (even something in the 6th decimal place is re-reviewed for accurcy and repeatability). Geology is a mature discipline to know the difference where contamination will provide "volunteer" C14 just from cosmic rays acting on atmospheric Carbon and Nitrogen.

SO for you to suggest that there is even a scintilla of fact supporting Armitage is idiocy (hence my new classification for you).
I suppose reading a physics text on radioactive decay would be too much to ask since your mind is well made-up to deny that Armitage was acting in a fraudulent manner .

PErhaps you should keep busting for Dr Shapiro, at least there you can argue his metaphysical positions rather than staid physics

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@layman,

Armitage's assertion that the soft tissue "precludes great age" is again , worldview led opinion, not science. You failed to present some of Mary SCweitzers later work with a ssistance from other scientists whove established that "fosilization" by iron adsorption is a new discovery. Its not a "destroyer of theory".

The mere fact that the overlying nd underlying Stratigraphy of the fossil beds has been carefully nd multimethodologically dated, establishes beyond a doubt that ARmitage is just ******* with science for religious profit.

You can clip and quote mine anything you wish. That changes nothing except to allow you more space to show how defiantly ignorant you wish to remain about this subject

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@layman,

Quote:

"Blood from Stone: How Fossils Can Preserve Soft Tissue: Mounting evidence from dinosaur bones shows that, contrary to common belief, organic materials can sometimes survive in fossils for millions of years"
By Mary H. Schweitzer Scientific American, Evolution » December 2010

The title of Schweitzers paper refutes your assertion that there is a "controversy"
SChweitzers was surprised at the pliability of the T rex tissue and the appearance of what appeared to be erythrocytes. The parts that you bolded , if read out of context (as you , a quote miner, present it). It makes it appear that there was some
"valid claim" that perhaps these fossils were young . NOT SO, the fossils ere clearly dated in situ by showing their sediments were of standard Cretaceous age and(assuming noone had come back with a doctored sample and reburied it among the Cretaceous layers), her T rex fossil SHOULD be contemporaneous with the sediment (IT WAS).
Mostof all this is just common sense (something that appears lacking in your own review which is so fast to latch on to support a fraud perp.

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@farmerman,

Heres a non-technical article written in the Smithsonian about SChweitzers find. If you will notice one thing. THERE WAS NEVER A MOMENT IN WHICH THE T rex (Incorrectly named "BOB") was ever considered to be less than the 68 million years old that the sedimentary isotopic dates presented. The real excitement among the paleo crowd was that "Here is a new method of preservation of soft tissue deep within hrd rock that may shed light on how these animals evolved"

The crap posed by the Creationists was kind of a source of mirth and it appeared that Mary SChweitzer, a devout Christian herself felt somehow attacked by these anti-science religionists. She and her colleagues didnt waste much time with them (but the press gave more cred to the Creationists than they deserved--perhaps that was the root of the guys like ARmitage) Here was an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into the coogwheels of paleontology

ANYWAY, read it yourself
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/

1 Reply

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

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