Timothy P. P. Roberts wrote as a comment in this blog:
It is truly a shame that perfect evidence for the shroud being of Medieval origin is dimissed. It is a great disservice to the huge efforts of those involved in the radiocarbon dating testing. The results are accurate and the samples came from the shroud. But this website isn’t about science, it is about faith in a relic. Why pretend otherwise?
Faith in a relic? Disservice? Really? Is this comment, itself, not a statement of faith in the “efforts of those involved in the radiocarbon dating testing?” And is it not dissing those who work for scientific progress?
As an example of progress, we might remember that just last year, an Oregon State University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences along with other recent studies, challenged the long established theory that birds descended from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs. "We’re finally breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with," said OSU’s John Ruben. Was this study a “great disservice” to the evolution researchers of the past whose conclusion are now challenged? No. This is the way science works.
And Einstein comes to mind, as well. He was wrong about the cosmological constant. Was it a disservice to challenge him as many did? No. By his own admission, it was the "greatest mistake of [his] life." Now, as we might imagine, a cosmological constant is being reconsidered to account for the fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerating when gravity should be slowing the process down. Science progresses. It is never a disservice to earlier efforts.
And thus, with substantial new information available some twenty years after the radiocarbon dating tests in 1988, Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, would write in Nature Online: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.”
It is significant, as well and perhaps more so, to note that Christopher Ramsey, the current head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, one of the places used for the dating in 1988, has written on the Oxford website:
There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that we continue to test the accuracy of the original radiocarbon tests as we are already doing. It is equally important that experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information.
Is further research as Ramsey suggests and are the studies listed below disservices to those involved in the 1988 radiocarbon dating testing? Of course not.
1. Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425 Issue 1-2, 2005, pages 189-194, by Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) – The peer-reviewed article is available on Elsevier BV’s ScienceDirect® online information site. The abstract reads:
The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis/ms proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth. The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud.
Ironically, Rogers was trying to prove that the “results are accurate and the samples came from the shroud.”
2. Microscopical Investigation of Selected Raes Threads from the Shroud of Turin by John L. Brown, retired Principal Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Energy and Materials Sciences Laboratory. This is a 2005 independent, by-different-means confirmation that the carbon 14 dating was flawed.
3. The 2008 work of Bob Villarreal and a team of nine scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory which confirmed that the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin is wrong. According to Villarreal:
[T]he [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.
4. Chemistry Today (Volume 126, Number 4, pages 4-12, July-August 2008 by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino). Discrepancies in the radiocarbon dating area of the Turin shroud.
5. A 2009 paper, Cotton in Raes/Radiocarbon Threads: The Example of Raes #7, by Thibault Heimburger; published on the STERA site.
6. A 2010 paper, Carbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin: Partially Labelled Regressors and the Design of Experiments, co-authored by Marco Riani, Anthony C. Atkinson, Giulio Fanti and Fabio Crosilla; recently published on the website of the London School of Economics. The abstract reads:
Due to the heterogeneity of the data and the evidence of a strong linear trend the twelve measurements of the age of the TS [=Turin Shroud] cannot be considered as repeated measurements of a single unknown quantity. The statement of Damon, Donahue, Gore, and eighteen others (1989) that “The results provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval” needs to be reconsidered in the light of the evidence produced by our use of robust statistical techniques.
But even in going back to 1988, we can’t help but notice warning signs that something was amiss that the testers, themselves, seemed to ignore. Perhaps that was a disservice to each other and the public at large.
- Giovanni Riggi, the person who actually cut the carbon 14 sample from the Shroud stated, "I was authorized to cut approximately 8 square centimetres of cloth from the Shroud…This was then reduced to about 7 cm because fibres of other origins had become mixed up with the original fabric …" (emphasis mine)
- Giorgio Tessiore, who documented the sampling, wrote: “…1 cm of the new sample had to be discarded because of the presence of different color threads.” (emphasis mine)
- Edward (Teddy) Hall, then head of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, had noticed fibers that looked out of place. A laboratory in Derbyshire concluded that the rogue fibers were cotton of “a fine, dark yellow strand.” Derbyshire’s Peter South wrote: “It may have been used for repairs at some time in the past…”
- Gilbert Raes, when he later examined some of the carbon 14 samples, noticed that cotton fibers were contained inside the threads, which could help to explain differences in fiber diameter. This may also explain why the carbon 14 samples apparently weighed much more than was as expected.
- Alan Adler at Western Connecticut State University found large amounts of aluminum in yarn segments from the radiocarbon sample, up to 2%, by energy-dispersive x-ray analysis. Why aluminum? That was an important question because it is not found elsewhere on the Shroud.
- The radiocarbon lab at the University of Arizona conducted eight tests. But there was a wide variance in the computed dates and so the team in Arizona combined results to produce four results thus eliminating the more outlying dates (reportedly they did so at the request of the British Museum, which was overseeing the tests). Even then, according to Remi Van Haelst, a an industrial chemist in Belgium who reviewed the measurements, the results failed to meet minimum statistical standards (chi-squared tests). Why the wide variance in the dates? Was it because of testing errors? Or was it because the sample was not sufficiently homogeneous? The latter seems very likely now, and the statistical anomaly indicates something very suspicious about the samples.
- Bryan Walsh, a statistician, examined Van Haelst’s analysis and further studied the measurements. He concluded that the divided samples used in multiple tests contained different levels of the C14 isotope. The overall cut sample was non-homogeneous and thus of questionable validity. Walsh found a significant relationship between the measured age of various sub-samples and their distance from the edge of the cloth. Though Walsh did not suggest invisible reweaving, it is consistent with his findings.
Argumentum ad populum.
I fully agree with all the points you put forward Dan to show that there is no question about the fact that the C14-Raes region of the Shroud wasn’t the same physically and chemically than the main part of the cloth. But you forgot 2 very important quotes that shows that the C14 dating is questionable : Late 2010, Timothy Jull wrote a paper in his own journal Radiocarbon trying to prove that his C14 sample received in 1988 was totally valid for dating. But at the end of his Paper, M. Jull wrote something incredible : he said that it would be a very good thing to do another C14 dating !!! That just prove how much even the C14 labs are not so sure about the result…
And there is also what Christopher Ramsey said some years ago about the fact that there is an apparent contradiction between the 1988 C14 result and many other data that seem to suggest a much earlier date for the Shroud. Ramsey is the head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit which participated in the 1988 Carbon 14 Dating of the Shroud. So, when the C14 people say things like that, that tells something !
Let’s agree: If the Shroud of Turin never existed the vast majority of the readers of this blog would still believe that a first century Nazarene named Jesus was Christ – the messiah. The existence or non-existence of relics imparts no influence on the fundamental foundation of Christianity – namely “faith” in the premise of a messiah.
Therefore, the scientific principle of observation, hypothesis, and testing toward repeatable results simply has no place in this blog. The premise that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah is untestable. The premise that Jesus rose from the dead is untestable. The premise that Jesus did is untestable. The messiah’s existence is purely a function of faith. Only YOU know the depth of your beliefs and the best examinations of OTHER people cannot prove whether YOU believe in a god. Your faith has no manifestation that produces repeatable results in the physical realm…and shouldn’t.
Some friends recently asked me to explain String Theory – the model used to explain many of the behaviors presented in the science of phenomenology and partical physics. After a short discussion one of the listeners interrupted me to say they had seen an episode of “Nova” that made String Theory seem very different from my perspective. I pointed out that “Nova” is designed to entertian the laymen and anyone who knows anything about any topic will always see the flaws in newspapers articles on that topic. Entertainment and scientific rigor are orthogonal in their goals. I suggested that two hours of entertaining public televison was not enough training to truly grasp the details and problems in String Theory – a topic is so obtuse that I can count on two hands the number of people for which it is understandable. None of them would claim String Theory is intuitive.
The above tale is a long path to this statement: I have never read anything like this blog. It is very entertaining. Unfortunately, that which entertains me is the consistent misrepresentation of peer reviewed scientific publications. I give credit to Dan Porter for being driven and faithful to his search for a relic which proves the existence of the Christ. But I know bad science when I smell it and this place fairly reeks.
The scientific principle is best guided by one goal: Do not strive to win the argument through rhetoric – work to bury one question in a mountain of irrefutable results. A pile of unrelated tidbits proves nothing but may have the appearence of winning the rhetorical argument.
You have faith in Jesus. Leave it there. Why soil your very real and personal faith with an unprovable premise that the shroud represents Jesus’s image? Even If you were able to scientifically prove to me that this artifact was made Easter day I would still argue that it was more likely to belong to someone long forgotten who died the same day.
Mr Roberts, your statements truly baffle me.They really are odd considering you seem to be well educated. I base this from your style of writing. I for one may lack the education or the writing skills, but can still see your errors. You go from saying believers (bloggers) here are refutting all ‘perfect’ evidence to the Shroud’s medieval origins, to saying believers are misrepresenting peer reviewed scientific papers!….What a shame you believe these things in your mind. If you want to claim we must stay within scientific boundaries, THEN YOU MUST YOURSELF. Furthermore with this in mind, you must recognize that nothing at this point scientifically points directly to a medieval origin, quite the opposite actually. It is a shame and a huge disservice you pay when you and others would dismiss the hundreds of thousands of hours of scientific study done by dozens of world class scientists, simply due to your bias. The whole C-14 dating has been shown to be a scientific blunder by all involved, so not perfect science.Historically it seems, it’s even worse.Many historical writings, documents and illustrations are simply being ‘dismissed’ which can easily pull the origin of the Shroud back literally to the 4th century…So I ask you, whom is really using rhetoric here?
Ron