and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells. Unreliable chronology Creationists claim that evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past. For example, it is argued that radiometric dating technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay rates of certain isotopes generates inconsistent and thus unreliable results. Radiocarbon dating based on the carbon-14 isotope has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions such as the principle of uniformitarianism, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed systems. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results. Another form of this objection is that fossil evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record, that fossil-dating is circular (see the Unfalsifiability section above), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossils, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with in situ formation. It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism (cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic punctuated equilibrium, which some assert is an ad hoc theory to explain the fossil gaps. Plausibility Improbability A common objection to evolution is that it is simply too unlikely for life, in its complexity and apparent "design", to have arisen "by chance". It is argued that the odds of life having arisen without a deliberate intelligence guiding it are so astronomically low that it is unreasonable not to infer an intelligent designer from the natural world, and specifically from the diversity of life. A more extreme version of this argument is that evolution cannot create complex structures (see the Creation of complex structures section below). The idea that it is simply too implausible for life to have evolved is often wrongly encapsulated with a quotation that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747"—a claim attributed to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and known as Hoyle's fallacy. Hoyle was a Darwinist, atheist and anti-theist, but advocated the theory