Assumptions baked into the VMS carbon dating

[eggyk]

Looking over your responses in this thread -- not only to my comments, but to others as well-- it really seems like you are not grasping certain aspect about the approach the Arizona team took, about how measurement errors affect data, about how probabilities work, and how multiple features of the manuscript point to a different prior belief than you are wanting to accept.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how this is the case. There is literally only one issue I have, and that is the calculation of the final average. In fact, not even the calculation itself (which was carried out completely correctly) but whether or not the calculation was appropriate to do in the first place. Again, I literally wrote a whole intro that basically boiled down to me agreeing with basically everything they did.

You seem to believe that I think that the double peak is the crux of the issue, when it isn't. If that peak was completely absent, I would have the exact same criticism of the averaging process. In fact, the example range I gave completely ignored that second peak. 

You are also saying I seem to have some prior belief about the nature of the parchment, when I literally don't. Is it not possible to have an issue with this without pushing some kind of agenda? Could you tell me what my supposed prior belief is? It seems it may be coming across as if I believe the manuscript is likely older or younger than the range given, when I am not saying that. 

The reasoning behind the adoption of the single-object assumption is just one of the things you seem to be missing. Granted, it really doesn't help that Hodgins explanations were imprecise, if not overtly misleading.

How have I misunderstood the reasoning? I literally directly quoted the reasoning given. There was no more reasoning given. 

And yet your responses suggest you still have a basic misunderstanding of the concepts. If not for that repeated failure, I would be inclined to try to find better ways to explain things.

I am open to hearing why I am wrong. If I have a misundestanding of a specific concept, please tell me what the misunderstanding is, and I will listen. Telling me that I don't understand doesn't help anything. Like, why are my points incorrect? People keep saying they are without telling me why. You say my points don't hold as much weight as I think they do. Okay, why? 

Sorry, it's frustrating and i'm getting defensive because I feel like many of the replies here are outright misrepresenting what I am saying.