Cazab asks: “And the next question is : in 1988 was it possible for Tucson to do measurements with only 3 mg (27/8=3.375) ?”
Good question. I don’t know the answer. After almost six years of utter silence – more if you consider that the story was unfolding for two years before being peer-reviewed and accepted – Timothy Jull’s (pictured) paper in the journal for which he is the editor in defense of his own lab raises more suspicions about the scientific professionalism of the Shroud of Turin tests at the University of Arizona. The almost complete silence for six to eight years seems almost a silent acknowledgement that everyone knew that Ray Rogers was right; the 1988 tests were invalid.
It is obvious that we don’t know from the Tucson lab how they handled the material and which measurements went with which subsamples. Do cutting diagrams exist? Do accurate weights and measures exist? Are there detailed chemical analyses? Were measurements really combined as some believe and if so why? How much material was retained? Was some of the fabric from the Shroud of Turin in a desk drawer until recently? Why the absence of details? Why the lack of transparency? Are there no detail records?
When Sue Benford and I submitted to Radiocarbon in 2001 our paper on the 16th century patch (a.k.a. invisible reweave), we were told who the reviewers were:
*Paul Damon, head of the U. of Arizona laboratory
*Jacque Evin, French C-14 expert present at the 1988 sample-taking
*Gabrial Vial, French textile expert present at the 1988 sample-taking
*Franco Testore, Italian French textile expert present at the 1988 sample-taking
*Harry Gove, inventor of the C-14 method, who had literally bet a companion that the Shroud was medieval and was heavily involved in various aspects of the dating, including working to keep STURP from being involved in any testing
Do you think the deck was stacked against us?