It amazes me; every year or so, we hear how someone has finally figured out how the Shroud of Turin was faked and that last year’s explanation was all wrong. The latest, from Luigi Garlaschelli, more convolutedly complex than Rube Goldberg scratching his ass, was accepted as a paper in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Imaging Science and Technology. In the same issue another peer-reviewed paper by no less than six scientists explained how profoundly wrong Garlaschelli was. Proponents of authenticity have done no better.
Why does all this remind me of a certain elementary school science fair project. A student had built a papier-mâché mountain with a jelly jar stuck in the top. He filled the jar with baking soda and poured in some vinegar. His poster, drenched with explosive goop, read, “Volcanoes happen when acid seeps into sodium bicarbonate deposits in mountains.”
Skeptics and believers alike are intent on making something that looks like the image on the shroud so they can say this is how the image was formed.