The universe appears "old", but it is still less than 10,000 years old

[Zazzy]

Not so fast! That is not the claim I was refuting, I was refuting your claim that creationists do not do any of their own research (which is completely false). Secondly, the number of peer-reviewed articles supporting a position is ultimately irrelevant; one peer-reviewed article can and often has discredited hundreds of articles that came before it.

Well, if you show me only one, I'll have to retract the claim that they don't do ANY of their own research, although one paper against thousands is pretty weak. But when I enter a new field, I (like most people, I think) like to get a good overview of it. I don't think any scientific field could provide you with one paper and say you had a good understanding of that field. I could start giving you an idea of the current state of many fields with about 10 good current papers. If you can't do it, OK.

I cannot figure out how you got so off topic. Creationists accept natural selection as a valid mechanism- I was never arguing that they did not.

I guess it was this quote, from your post #48, which "got me so off topic":

How do you know that it is the appearance of design that is the illusion and not the natural selection mechanism that is the illusion?

Did you mean something different? If so, then say so.

I was merely pointing out that Dawkins argues for the use of illusion in science, which means that if someone argues for the appearance of age in the Universe being illusion they are not necessarily being unscientific.

And all things being equal in the primary research, this claim would have merit, as I have said.

Somehow you got off thinking that I was arguing that creationists believe that natural selection is an illusion. Natural selection can be a real mechanism and life can still have the valid appearance of design anyways- they are not mutually exclusive.

So is natural selection real, or does it have the appearance of design, or both? This is waffly. I think your research papers would probably help me, here, since they'll obviously propose molecular mechanisms I currently am not aware of.

Reviewers are always anonymous so I am not sure how you are going to ever meet this criterion.

Well, if it's published in a respected journal, you can be sure it has been peer-reviewed (with the exception of PNAS. I hate that about them).

Does research that does not meet currently accepted research techniques generally get published in peer-reviewed journals?

Not generally, although new research protocols are often published, and then immediately are tried by competitive grad students. If they don't work, the grad students get their PIs to write angry letters, and then the papers get retracted. This does happen occasionally (think the cloning scandal).

Wait, are you really going to take the position that only good science is peer-reviewed and all peer-reviewed science is good science?

Nope. But it's a good start when you're learning a new field. Much more reliable than anything else we've got. And since usefulness is all that matters to the grade-grubbing grad students, fraud is usually detected. Is it perfect? No. It's the best system around, though.

Then we get down to the fun part: putting contradictory experimental data side by side and letting the best data- and the most sensible explanation of that data- take the field. It's [sic] how scientists do it.

I wish it really were that simple but I am afraid it is not.

I'm not sure why you included a [sic] here, since "it's" is contraction of "it is," as in "it is how most scientists do it." A correct use of "its" would be, "Look at that dog! Its hat is on backwards!"
Clear?

It's (see that? "It is" becomes "it's" with the use of an apostrophe to replace a letter!) that simple, and it's really fun. It's even fun to be wrong in a scientific argument over data and analysis, because you learn so much in the process and it generally saves you from publishing something that might embarrass you. Are you not going to provide the papers? I was looking forward to it.

I do not understand why you are mischaracterizing my position like this. You explicitly made the claim that creationists do not do any of their own research. I explicitly objected to that claim. Now you are referring to cross references and asking for numerous articles published this year.

I don't believe I am mischaracterizing you. I have already said that if you have one paper to show me, I will of course retract my claim that creationists do NO research. But that's petty given the larger concern- that scientists are entirely overlooking a rich and well-researched body of data from excellent creationist scientists, an unacceptable situation. If the playing field is indeed level, then creationists must publish hundreds of primary research papers every year, so asking for ten is pretty piddly, and surely you feel (as I would) that 10 papers could never do the richness of your field justice. Plus, I qualified it to "the last few years," and I said that if there was a particularly seminal work that was a little older, I'd be willing to look at it.

It seems you would WANT to show me the research, if it's so convincing. Why be so resistant?