Some Problems with Random Samples of Creationist Literature:
Circular Citation Meets the Words “May and Could”
Neal M. Hughes, MLIS
While some of the prominent creationist scientists, as self-described, use portions of the scientific method and contemporary standards of charts and illustrations in their work, the abstracts, reference lists, and introductions often reveal a great deal behind the graphs, formulae and formal tone.
For example, let us consider first a work by D. Russell Humphreys, “The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields, Creation Science Research Quarterly 21:3, Dec. 1984. Dr. Humphreys offers the reader an abstract that starts with an amazing statement: “God could have started magnetic fields in the solar system in a very simple way: by creating the original atoms of the planets with many of their nuclear spins pointing in the same direction. The small magnetic fields of so many atomic nuclei add up to fields large enough to account for the magnetism of the planets.”
Indeed, God could have, might have, and perhaps even should have done so, but does that even hint at objectivity? Using Humphreys’s device, one could start out with a premise along the lines of “The sky goddess, when sad, causes the rain to fall upon the earth, then it is absorbed by the atmosphere from the sea and enables her to cry when sad once again, perhaps.”
In each statement we find the lexicon of science oddly juxtaposed alongside the “perhaps” and “could” of divine intervention - the latter which cannot be proven to any means recognized as reasonable or scientific. My dog might have psychic powers which only other dogs recognize, why there are studies that dogs exhibit strange behaviors before an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, and now I shall next start to write about earthquakes and volcanoes and ignore the elephant in the room, my claim of psychic power to canis familiris. That would be the Humphreys method.
But the method of erstwhile scholarly communication exhibited in the above article is not the only flaw which one finds in the field. Let us now note the “circular citation” incumbent in these writers’ works. One example is the paper “Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth” by Vardiman, et al. In this example, the above cited example of supernatural intervention is endorsed as a necessary mechanism for the science to “work.”
The introduction once again contains a rather odd statement seldom found in any scientific communication in which society at large is familiar: “Scripture talks of at least two major events which occurred after Creation, the Judgment in the Garden of Eden and the Flood. It would seem appropriate to consider at least that an original distribution of elements could have been mixed, and radioactive processes speeded up during one or both of these events.” Scripture as well talks of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still for continued slaughter. One is surprised to learn not of a study that presupposes that the earth was once stationary and the sun around it revolving, until some supernatural event then occurred to fix the heliocentric model with which we have been long familiar, might this author suggest the final capture of the Ark of the Covenant by the Babylonians? That might be far-fetched, but no more than Vardiman’s prose.
Vardiman, et al. might aptly be termed a “creation posse.” While the two branches of the school of creationism is divided into the “Old Creation” v. “Young Earth” camps, they apply the same circular citations to and for one another’s reading and research enjoyment. In the above cited paper, the following citations occur in verbatim facimile:
[1]Baumgardner, J.R., Snelling, A.A., Humphreys, D.R. and Austin, S.A., Measurable 14C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation-Flood Model, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[2] Chaffin, E.F., Theoretical Mechanisms of Accelerated Radioactive Decay, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin, Editors, 2000, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO, pp. 303-331.
[3] Chaffin, E.F., Accelerated Decay: Theoretical Models, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, volume.
[4] Davies, J.H. and Stevenson, D.J., Physical Model of Source Region of Subduction Zone , Journal of Geophysical Research, 97(1992), pp. 2037-2070.
[5] Gamble, J.A., Wood, C.P., Price, R.C., Smith, I.E.M., Stewart, R.B. and Waight, T., A Fifty Year Perspective of Magmatic Evolution on Ruapehu Volcano, New Zealand: Verification of Open System Behaviour in an Arc Volcano, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 170(1999), pp. 301-314.
[6] Gentry, R.V., Glish, G.J. and McBay, E.H., Differential Helium in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Management, Geophysical Research Letters, 9:10 (1982), pp. 1129-1130.
[7] Giem, P., Carbon-14 Content of Fossil Carbon, Origins, 51(2001), pp. 6-30.
[8] Humphreys, D.R., Accelerated Nuclear Decay: A Viable Hypothesis?, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and
E.F. Chaffin, Editors, 2000, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO, pp. 333-379.
[9] Humphreys, D.R., Austin, S.A., Baumgardner, J.R. and Snelling, A.A., Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[10] Snelling, A.A., Radioactive “Dating” in Conflict! Fossil Wood in Ancient Lava Flow Yields Radiocarbon, Creation Ex Nihilo, 20:1(1997), pp. 24-27.
[11] Snelling, A.A., Stumping Old-Age Dogma: Radiocarbon in an “Ancient” Fossil Tree Stump Casts Doubt on Traditional Rock/Fossil Dating, Creation Ex Nihilo, 20:4(1998), pp. 48-51.
[12] Snelling, A.A., The Cause of Anomalous Potassium-Argon “Ages” for Recent Andesite Flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand and the Implications for Potassium-argon “Dating”, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, R.E. Walsh, Editor, 1998, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 503-525.
[13] Snelling, A.A., Dating Dilemma: Fossil Wood in Ancient Sandstone, Creation Ex Nihilo, 21:3(1999), pp. 39-41.
[14] Snelling, A.A., Geological Conflict: Young Radiocarbon Date for Ancient Fossil Wood Challenges Fossil Dating, Creation Ex Nihilo, 22:2(2000), pp. 44-47.
[15] Snelling, A.A., Conflicting “Ages” of Tertiary Basalt and Contained Fossilized Wood, Crinum, Central Queensland, Australia, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 14:2(2000), pp. 99-122.
[16] Snelling, A.A., Geochemical Processes in the Mantle and Crust, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin, Editors, 2000, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO, pp. 123-304.
[17] Snelling, A.A., Radiohalos, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin, Editors, 2000, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO, pp. 381-468.
[18] Snelling, A.A., The Relevance of Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb Isotope Systematics to Elucidation of the Genesis and History of Recent Andesite Flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Radioisotope Dating, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[19] Snelling, A.A., Whole-Rock K-Ar Model and Isochron, and Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb Isochron, “Dating” of the Somerset Dam Layered Mafic Intrusion, Australia, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[20] Snelling, A.A. and Armitage, M.H., Radiohalos-A Tale of Three Granitic Plutons, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[21] Snelling, A.A. and Woodmorappe, J., The Cooling of Plutons on a Young Earth, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, R.E. Walsh, Editor, 1998, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 527-545.
[22] Snelling, A.A., Austin, S.A. and Hoesch, W.A., Radioisotopes in the Diabase Sill (Upper Precambrian) at Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: An Application and Test of the Isochron Dating Method, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R.Ivey, Editor, 2003, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, this volume.
[23] Tatsumi, Y., Formation of the Volcanic Front in Subduction Zones, Geophysical Research Letters, 13(1986), pp. 717-720.
[24] Vardiman, L., Introduction, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin, Editors, 2000, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, MO, pp 1-25.
This is the most egregious instance of “incestuous citation and publication” that can be imagined. Firstly, the same few names appear again and again as co-authors or else editors of journals in which they also publish and present. How can there be a normal “blind” peer review when Vardiman , as only one example, wrote note 24 and then edited the journal along with Snelling and Chaffin in which it appeared?
In fact, the Creationists have not merely turned the standards for scholarly communication askew, but have inverted its intent: the promotion of new knowledge. Instead of the normal process of identification of problem, literature search for existing research on the problem or that which touches upon it, formulation of research plan, carrying out of research, presentation of results to peers in a working paper or at a conference [this step is optional], then after criticism and feedback both positive and negative, presenting the same to an academic journal for blind peer review, then following comments from reviewers, making editorial changes as needed and then publication under the name of the author once accepted by the editorial board.
Instead of identification of a problem as the first step in research, the Creationists seem to jump to the answer to the problem first in claiming divine intervention, then posing the anomalies within the literature and current research and then reiterating the answer of the divine as conclusion. Nota bene, these men seem to have a modicum of scientific discourse still left within them and are not adverse in positing their thesis statements with the words “could have” or “might have,” having had the techniques of scholarly communication drummed into their heads in former lives as legitimate scholars.
In short, other than examples in how not to conduct scholarly communication, the works of the various creation institutes and quarterlies ought to be avoided, lest one fall into a life of ridicule and righteous small circle intellectual incest.