Debunked.Well I guess since you said so - Gentry should just give up eh?
I love how you guys post talkorigins links all the time and expect everyone to take one person's "rebuttal" as fact. The NAS won't debate him publicly - I wonder if Baillieul will?
Challenge
Reports
Maybe I'll try to set-up an online debate between the two. That would be fun, eh?
The creationists love their debates, until someone takes them up on it. Some alleged kinesiologist offered to debate anyone, on evolution, a while back, for $10,000, I took him up on it, with the only proviso that the debate be for $1 rather than $10,000 (quite frankly, I don't trust you guys where money or anything else valuable is involved). When the money was off the table, he wasn't interested. Curious.
Yeah, I can see the NAS sending some Nobelist out to Wichita State at short notice, to debate someone they likely consider a crank.
> expect everyone to take one person's "rebuttal" as fact.
It only takes one. However, Google is full of refutations of Gentry's notion, as is the literature. Such as "The Geology of Gentry's 'Tiny Mystery'," May 1988, Journal of Geological Education. I especially liked the summation in:
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/revised8.htm "The formation of granite by replacement of solid rocks means that Gentry's theory is no longer tenable. He can no longer legitimately say that Po-halo-bearing granites must form by supernatural means."
Nice and succinct.
> The NAS won't debate him publicly
Why should they? Should they waste their time debating EVERYONE with a crackpot notion? It would be a waste of time and resources, and would achieve nothing.
Please note that in every area of crackpot endeavor, be it Creationism, UFOlogy, Ley Lines, ancient astronauts, ghosts, telekinesis, etc., etc., the claim is nearly always made "Ha! The 'experts' refuse to debate me publicly! This proves that they are afraid of my Discovered Truth!!!!!"
All it *really* proves is that the experts do not have infinite time to mess around with crackpots.
Science is self-correcting. If someone has a notion that the scientific community sees as nutty, but it Really Does Work, then that will be found out. If it was real, people would be making money with it, and demonstrating the truth of it. Scientists like nothing better than disturbing the Established Order. That's what *every* scientist craves... to make some discovery that will shake the foundations. Claims that scientists only want to tow some party line are ignorant and slanderous.
But like Cold Fusion, polywater, pyramid power and a myriad of other "discoveries," polonium halos are based not on Truth, but on misunderstandings of the evidence and perhaps intentional deception.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html