From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: False C O R R E L L A T I O N S, a couple of better examples
Date: 12 Apr 92 00:47:46 GMT
Organization: HTE


I've seen the word "correlations" in a number of articles here just lately;
the gist of what is being said is that the interpretations being given
to ice core data, data from ocean-floor core samples etc. tend to correlate
or corroberate one another in their interpretation of uniform conditions on
earth within the last several thousand years.  Obviously this rules out
Velikovsky and his theories of recent catastrophism.

I would expect these kinds of data to hang together or corroberate themselves;
these interpretations are all based on the axiom of uniformity, which has
permiated the natural sciences for almost 200 years now, and the only way one
such result might conflict with the others is if somebody did his arithmetic
wrong.  You assume that by the time these guys get to PHD level, they can at 
least do arithematic, even if they can't think their way out of the logical
corner they've painted their way into.

When a particular piece of data DOESN'T fit in with the uniformity axiom, 
they hammer it and twist it until it does.  I've posted a large article
containing several bona fide examples of this recently, and I am reposting it
tonight for benefit of newcomers or people who didn't realize what it was.

This is the answer to those who claim that the correlation of standard
interpretations rules out Velikovsky.  Ginenthal's "Sagan and Velikovsky"
contains a lot more such material for those interested.

Are any of you people old enough to remember the Ervin committee hearings
in 72?  Here was a case of a lot of people having more or less the same
axe to grind, and EVERYBODY was telling the same story, all of these stories
corroberating eachother, the level of CORRELLATION very high indeed.  Only
one strange-looking, out-of-place, politically-incorrect little guy was
saying anything out of sorts, or out of keeping with the entire body of all
other testimony, and that little guy's name was John Dean.  You'd have
thought that since that guy's story was the only piece of testimony in the
whole affair which didn't CORRELLATE, that he had to either be insane or be
some kind of a pathalogical liar, but guess what...

That's right.  Dean was the only person in that whole affair telling a straight
story.

I've seen several examples of this kind of thing over the years.  A couple of
times the Educational Testing Service in Princeton NJ has provided excellent
examples.  Their tests usually involve several paragraphs, each followed by
several questions based ON that paragraph, and I personally have seen one
such paragraph which was absolutely ambiguous.  Assuming you worked your
arithematic right, you either got all of those questions right or all of them
wrong depending upon which way you interpreted the ambiguity.  This is the same
identical situation we have with the core interpretations being interpreted
by people who basically believe in and start out with the axiom of uniformity.
Anything these people see which might even hint at anything other than a
uniformitarian interpretation is swept under the rug as an outlier or an
exception which proves the rule.



Ted Holden 
HTE

-- 
HTE
bear
Newsgroups: talk.origins