imageA reader writes (BTW ColinB is also known as Sciencebod in this blog):

ColinB has a point when he says Fanti et al assume that the cloth is genuine and do not entertain the skeptics point of view. I would call its inadequate and not comedic, but the point is still valid.

Does he have a point?

Another reader has a different point of view:

Comedic. So-called scientists. The notion that Giulio’s paper is suitable only for the thrash. Read the junk sciencebob writes on his blog if you want comedy. Does he think for a minute that he can create an image by heat that is superficial to only 200 or even 1000 nanometers, that gets its shades of dark and light color from discontinuities of same shade of color fibers (like in a half tone), that is negative and 3D? Oh, I forget, he denies the 3D is real.

Here is what Sciencebod wrote that prompted the above emails:

. . . Suffice it to say that the desrciption of the computerisied anthropometric study of Fanti et al as “real scientific work” is comedic, as is the paper itself. Nowhere does that paper consider the sceptics’ view that the image was produced from an inanimate replica. e.g. a bas relief or statue. Instead it makes numerous explicit assumptions that it was a body that had been taken down from a cross in a state of rigor mortis with head tipped forward, knees drawn up, that an image had been acquired on a cloth that was loosely draped over etc. Talk about self-serving assumptions – ones that make that final diagram of the two “supeimposable” (sic)outlines totally at odds with unaided, non messed-around-with simple observation, e.g.

link to non-computer transformed dorsal v frontal comparison

Note too they say “superimposable”, not “superimposed” – a crucial difference, and then refer to “compatible”, a term that is shot through with subjectivity.

Nowhere does the paper say how the image was formed from a real person on that draped-over cloth, especially those parts not in direct contact with the cloth. What a worthless publication – the referees should have thrown it straight back, or better still in the bin…

I am only too painfully aware, needless to say, that the icy-cold objectivity of (real) science is not for everyone (present company excepted ;-) and that would include those so-called scientists who use computer-aided (re-)imaging systems in an attempt to escape the evidence of their own eyes, to say nothing of common sense…

The clue to the artefact – a term I use deliberately- lies I believe in those (over)long bony fingers, says he with a gleam in his eye, which I intend to put up for discussion shortly. But probably not here… I know where I am not welcome…

ColinB

Basis: Sciencebod reacts