Ancient penguin DNA raises doubts about accuracy of genetic dating techniques

Penguins that died 44,000 years ago in Antarctica have provided extraordinary frozen DNA samples that challenge the accuracy of traditional genetic aging measurements, and suggest those approaches have been routinely underestimating the age of many specimens by 200 to 600 percent.

[MIDutch]

Another point in scientific history that the "creationists/IDers" will point to and say "see, science changes it's mind again, how can anything it says be trusted", all the while totally missing the significance of the research.

[MikeF]

Agreed. What they will undoubtedly miss is that this is an increase in accuracy. Always a good thing.

[MIDutch]

MikeF wrote:

Agreed. What they will undoubtedly miss is that this is an increase in accuracy. Always a good thing.

And the fact that genetic testing will determine dates that are OLDER than previously held ... NOT a good thing for the whole 6000 year old earth fairy tale.

[naman]

MIDutch wrote:

<quoted text>
And the fact that genetic testing will determine dates that are OLDER than previously held ... NOT a good thing for the whole 6000 year old earth fairy tale.

Let us wait a little and see. Often such preliminary repports are not scientific facts but scientific speculation.

http://www.1000mistakes.com

[Noodly James]

naman wrote:

<quoted text>
Let us wait a little and see. Often such preliminary repports are not scientific facts but scientific speculation.
http://www.1000mistakes.com

They match up with earlier unpublished research and this addition yielded enough proof to support publishing.

[naman]

Noodly James wrote:

<quoted text>
They match up with earlier unpublished research and this addition yielded enough proof to support publishing.

It is known that this kind of dating is not 1005 correct always. But it also is known that publishing does not prove one iota - not unless it is peer rewiewed and published in a reliable scienticic media - and even then things sometimes turns out to be wrong.

Other kind of publishing?- many a journalist and many a newspaper will publish anything that smells of sensation because that means good sales and money.

http://1000mistakes.com

[Noodly James]

naman wrote:

<quoted text>
It is known that this kind of dating is not 1005 correct always. But it also is known that publishing does not prove one iota - not unless it is peer rewiewed and published in a reliable scienticic media - and even then things sometimes turns out to be wrong.
Other kind of publishing?- many a journalist and many a newspaper will publish anything that smells of sensation because that means good sales and money.
http://1000mistakes.com

Ok, then it adds more evidence as you are technically correct in that there is no such thing as absolute proof. I went to your link. Have you visited http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index...

[Erasmus05]

naman wrote:

<quoted text>
It is known that this kind of dating is not 1005 correct always. But it also is known that publishing does not prove one iota - not unless it is peer rewiewed and published in a reliable scienticic media - and even then things sometimes turns out to be wrong.
Other kind of publishing?- many a journalist and many a newspaper will publish anything that smells of sensation because that means good sales and money.
http://1000mistakes.com

It is worth noting that molecular clocks have been hotly debated in the peer reviewed literature from day one. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't ... that's the problem.

[Molecular boy]

the skeptics

[naman]

Erasmus05 wrote:

<quoted text>
It is worth noting that molecular clocks have been hotly debated in the peer reviewed literature from day one. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't ... that's the problem.

As far as I understand science, they agree on that the method mostly is reliable, but that one have to use a correction factor.

http://1000mistakes.com - or "Mistakes in the Quran" on Google, Yahoo, etc.

[Erasmus05]

naman wrote:

<quoted text>
As far as I understand science, they agree on that the method mostly is reliable, but that one have to use a correction factor.

It does mostly work, but the correction factors are somewhat arbitrary (a very bad thing in science), and clock data from different parts of the same genome can return different results.

This type of analysis started back in the days when people would have to pour their own DNA gels and read them by hand. It was a laborious task. I know, I have done a few. This meant that there was not a whole lot of sequence data and that sequence data only covered a few species. I was in high school when the Human Genome Project started, and this is the technology that they used at the onset of this project. It was very, very slow going. Many graduate student projects involved sequencing an entire bacterial genome of 2-5 million bases. It would take them 3 years to do it. Now that same genome can be sequenced in under a week.

Modern DNA sequencers are automated, fast, accurate, and ubiquitous. Even if your lab doesn't have one you can still get the DNA sequence on the cheap (in research money terms). There are even new technologies that are faster yet. What took the Human Genome project over a decade to accomplish can now be done in a matter of months, perhaps days if they really pushed the technology. This means that these types of molecular clocks are no longer needed. The "resolution" is being amped up to the point that the methodology is no longer needed. Add to that a growing list of ancient DNA sources.