[tacticalogic]

Now, let’s say you have an environment that is still sealed but another scientist comes in and, not realizing you’re in the middle of something, adds or removes flies or maggots? Then, when you try to apply your knowledge about exponential growth/decay you will get erroneous conclusions.

And every time you repeat this experiment some other scientist comes in and does the same thing, so that you keep getting the same erroneous results over and over again?

[OneWingedShark]

>And every time you repeat this experiment some other scientist comes in and does the same thing, so that you keep getting the same erroneous results over and over again?

No. That’s not what I’m saying; look you can take different samples from the same fossil, test them separately, and get varying results.

The assumption here is that your “sealed environment” is not tampered with (or unsealed, as case may be). If there is a way for you to gain or lose maggots or flies, either one then the system is not reliable.

Taking the WHOLE Earth as your sample would obviously give you different readings than some discrete portions. (ie rock age disparities) Even excluding extra-terrestrial samples, that rocks have different ages should be somewhat puzzling, after all,, all that mapper was present at planetary accretion, right?

So then, maybe we’re measuring more the exposure than the actual age of these items... which is not to say that the two aren’t linked. Maximum exposure for zero time would be the same as zero exposure for maximum time, but there would obviously be an relationship between the two.