Creation's Tiny Mystery

Line	Mr. Ennis	(Attorney for the ACLU):
	Q	Dr. Gentry, I am not asking you about which techniques were used. I am simply asking you, it is true, is it not, that when your data was re-examined using more sensitive techniques that it was found that superheavy elements were not present. Is that true or false?
160	A	What I am trying to tell you is that in examining the inclusions again we used the same techniques we used to begin with. So it wasn't that we necessarily had to use more sensitive techniques— . . . [partly unclear or inaudible]. It turns out we didn't do, the people doing the [original] experiments didn't [properly] do the blank background experiments. [Note: The original experiments used protons and the later ones used x rays to fluoresce the giant-halo inclusions, but x-ray analysis was the detection technique used in both experiments.]
	Q	You testified at some length about a letter from the National Science Foundation, July 11, 1977, which denied your application for a particular grant.
	A	Yes.
	Q	Is it not fair to say that that letter concluded that one of the reasons they denied your grant application at that time was that the [p. 309] panel felt that you and your colleagues were to be faulted for the techniques you used in coming to your initial conclusion that there were superheavy elements?
	A	Yes, I believe it did say that.
180	Q	Did not that rejection letter go on to say that the panel felt that the principal investigator and his colleagues should have checked out all such possible reactions before publication because we know that that technique might produce the results you found? Is it not true?
	A	I think what you are saying is generally true.
	Q	Now, Dr. Gentry, I am not trying to embarrass you on this point because you yourself candidly acknowledged by your own admission—
	A	There is no problem.
	Q	You acknowledged by your own admission, did you not, that the evidence described in that earlier paper was not due to superheavy elements but was due to a more conventional phenomena?
	A	That's right.
	Q	That's not the only time you have published conclusions you later retracted, is it?
	A	No, that is right.
	Q	In fact, didn't you once invent new alpha activity to account for some ghost rings in radiohalos?
	A	Yes, if you are referring to the slides of the Wölsendorf fluorite—the slides that I showed yesterday—yes.
	Q	And did you not later acknowledge that you erred in inventing new alpha activity?
200	A	. . . [inaudible] I surely did.
	Q	So you have published conclusions in this field before which later have turned out to be wrong.
	A	Which I later said that were wrong, yes.
	Q	In August of this year did an attorney named Wendell Bird ask you if you would be willing to testify for the State in this case?
	A	Yes, he did. We discussed that.
	Q	You would concede, would you not, that a scientist can have observations in accord with a theory but that would not necessarily confirm the proof of it.
	A	That is correct.
	Q	Henderson's theories do explain the existence of Po-210 halos even in the absence of uranium halos in coalified wood in a conventional, natural-law way, do they not?
	A	. . . (inaudible] no. There are uranium halos and polonium halos in coalified wood.
	Q	But not occurring exactly in the same halo rings. There is migration, is that not correct? [p. 310]
	A	Yes, the uranium halos and the polonium-210 halos are different.
220	Q	Yes, that's what I am asking. You mentioned in your testimony some scientists, I believe you mentioned Wheeler—
	A	Yes—
	Q	And Anders. Is it not true that Wheeler and Anders and other scientists who have read your material think that a conventional natural law explanation will be found for the existence of other polonium halos in granites?
	A	Yes, they do.
	Q	I have no further questions.

Transcribed from audio tape recorded by P. Merkel, Official Court Reporter, U.S. District Court, Little Rock, Arkansas.

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