This comment has been promoted to its own posting. Gore was one of the authors of the 1989 Nature article on the carbon 14 dating of the shroud. Please feel free to comment:
Exactly where is the data that discredits the Radiocarbon dating. Have other parts of the Shroud been dated for comparison. Is cotton vs. linen the only “evidence”. In other words are we still in need of information. And what the notion of a neutron flux at the resurection…as put forward in the issue of Nature with our shroud paper. Careful fellow humans for we are without the final truth and in a perfect creation we do not want to give out a dream of our own imagining as a replacement. As one of the original authors of the dating I am still waiting to see something interesting and have remained silent. I see many have a lot to say and seem to know all the secrets of the universe. Besides fragile human ego I see nothing so far. More will be revealed beyond the fragility of human nature …I pray.
— Brad H. Gore
Has perhaps Brad Gore, one of the authors of Nature paper on C-14 (made in 1988 on the Turin shroud) some answers to the following questions?
Many thanks in advance.
-1) In the Nature report it is stated that “The results … yield a
calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the
linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 – 1390….”
How do you reach a 95% confidence level if the corresponding Chi-
square value (reported in Table 2) is 6.4?
-2) R. Van Haelst and others corrected the errors written in the
Nature report and obtained the following conclusion. The results of
radiocarbon measurements of Arizona, Oxford and Zurigo labs yield a
calibrated date of 1280-1300 BC with only a significance level of
1.2%. These results therefore furnish the conclusive evidence that
the sample used by labs are NOT homogeneous in C-14 content.
Which are your comments to this statement?
-3) The strip cut from the Shroud in 1988 was similar to a rectangle
of ~21 mm x 81 mm, but only a part of it of ~17 mm x 41 mm was used
for dating; why, from Nature report it results: “a strip (~10 mm x 70
mm) was cut”? Was perhaps dated a different sample by the labs or was
it only a mistake?
-4) One of the fundamental hypotheses of the 14C method is: no
contamination exists in the sample so all the 14C measured derives
from the vegetable under consideration.
The body image formation process is still not explained in the Turin
Shroud image.
How can you be sure that this fundamental hypothesis is verified in
the present case and how can you demonstrate that there was no any
change in the chemical structure of the linen fibers, also in terms
of C-14, due to the image formation? (A. Adler, R. Rogers and others
demonstrated that there was a chemical change in the image fibers).
-5) From Table 2 of Nature report, it results, for Sample #1, a mean
radiocarbon date from Arizona lab of 646 ± 31 years instead of 646 ±
17 years. Why it was never corrected this mistake?
-6) The mistake in question (5) derives from a previous formula in
which the right 17 value was used instead of the wrong 31. In
addition, using 31 instead of 17 in the mean date from Arizona lab of
646 ± 31 years, resulted a significance level of 4.17% that was
rounded to 5% to accomplish the predefined limit that allowed a
combination of results. These data lead to think to a possible
manipulation.
What is your comment?
-7) Using the corrected value of 17, a significance level of 1.2%
results, very lower than the limit of 5%.
Why the data were combined? Why the measurement were not repeated as
it should have been done?
-8) In Nature report, just before the Conclusions it is written: “The
results, together with the statistical assessment of the data
prepared in the British Museum, were forwarded to Professor Bray of
the Istituto di Metrologia ‘G. Colonetti’, Turin, for his comments.
He confirmed that the results of the three laboratories were mutually
compatible, and that, on the evidence submitted, none of the mean
results was questionable.” Do you still agree with this statement?
-9) Someone has observed that even if there is some mistake in the
Nature report, all the results confirm a medieval age of the Turin
Shroud. Do you agree with this observation?
If so, how do you explain that the results are not a clear clue of
contamination in the sample?
-10) Don’t you think that a sign of contamination (of about 200
years) in very few square centimeters of fabric can lead to a
contamination of the order of thousands years in some square meters
in the same fabric?
-11) Why the initial proposed procedure, that foresaw the sampling in
various locations of the Turin Shroud was not followed during the
1988 sampling? What was the information that allowed the scientist to
surely suppose that the Shroud has a uniform content of C-14 in all
its area?
-12) According to B. Walsh and others, instead of a uniform model, at
least a linear model, for the content of C-14 in the Turin Shroud
area, should be assumed.
Are they wrong?
We are certainly still in need of information to answer Brad Gore’s question. What we know is that the samples taken in 1988 dated to 14th century. We also know that the samples had a position dependent age gradient which may be due to random differences in the calibration of the AMS laboratories or may be due to some property of the sample that caused a position based variation in the amount of C14 present. We don’t know which.
Finally we know that the sample contained anomalous cotton which is not commonly present in the shroud as a whole and so indicates that there is something clearly unrepresentative about the sample site. Some suggestions have been that the site was the site of a 15th century sample which was taken and the area invisibly rewoven using French invisible reweaving technology. This suggestion has been criticized, but not eliminated from consideration. Samples of threads from the sample are give a positive test for vanillin while shroud fibers in general do not, again indicating that the sample area is anomalous. So while there is not particular reason to doubt the 14th century AMS result (although there are statistical problems) there is quite strong reason to doubt that the sample was truly representative of the shroud as a whole. There is also quite a lot of other data which calls into question the 14th century result. However much of that data is historical in character and somewhat fragmentary. The Pray codex, the report of Robert de Clari from the 4th crusade and other historical data suggests the shroud is much older than the carbon date. So until a more statistically satisfactory, multi-site test is conducted the date we currently have seems to have been generated on a non-representative sample.
Regards, Ray Schneider
member of the Shroud Science Group
Thanks Brad. After Christopher Ramsey you are the first physicist who accepts courageously an open discussion.
My answer to your series of questions is very simple. The first document of the National Hungarian Library exhibits 4 Miniatures over a “Codex”, named “Codex Pray”. This document has been scrutinized by Professor E. Poulle, emeritus director of the famous “école des Chartes” de Paris, membre de l’Institut. It is authentic and it has been assembled before 1192. But the man who painted these miniatures must have seen, in Constantinople, the true Shroud of Turin before 1169 (starting of the war between Hungary and Byzance). Consequently, the date proposed (1325), with its very low standard deviation value found by the 3 labs, must be considered as a true “outlier”, which cancels the methodology used.
One of its two parts must have failed: the “soft” one (sampling, interpretation…) or the “hard” one (AMS and calculus). You are the only who could tell me which?
If you have some doubts concerning the validity of this statement, please let me know, I can enter into more details.
Best Regards,
Marcel