[asa] radiometric question

I went to talk origins to learn about radiometric dating, and was happy to see it referred to this ASA article:

"Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective"
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
I have a question. It says:

14. A young-Earth research group reported that they sent a rock erupted in 1980 from Mount Saint Helens volcano to a dating lab and got back a potassium-argon age of several million years. This shows we should not trust radiometric dating.

There are indeed ways to "trick" radiometric dating if a single dating method is improperly used on a sample. Anyone can move the hands on a clock and get the wrong time. Likewise, people actively looking for incorrect radiometric dates can in fact get them. Geologists have known for over forty years that the potassium-argon method cannot be used on rocks only twenty to thirty years old. Publicizing this incorrect age as a completely new finding was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed in the Potassium-Argon Dating section above. Be assured that multiple dating methods used together on igneous rocks are almost always correct unless the sample is too difficult to date due to factors such as metamorphism or a large fraction of xenoliths.
Let me ask a clarifying question. Suppose a YEC takes a rock from Mt. St. Helen's and asks for a date due to radiometric dating. I assume various dating methods will be used... will they get the correct recent date? I didn't see a clear, blunt, answer.

...Bernie

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Received on Tue Nov 4 12:36:29 2008