Scientist Realizes Important Flaw in Radioactive Dating Apr. 3, 2017 In beta decay, a neutron turns into a proton by emitting a beta particle, which is an electron (click for credit) As someone who has studied radioactivity in detail, I have always been a bit amused by the assertion that radioactive dating is a precise way to determine the age of an object. This false notion is often promoted when radioactive dates are listed with utterly unrealistic error bars. In this report, for example, we are told that using one radioactive dating technique, a lunar rock sample is 4,283 million...