Colin Berry writes:
Any scientist worth his or her salt would have refused to run tests on non-random samples taken from the same corner of the Shroud, or at any rate, specimens that were non-representative of the entire expanse of fabric, with or without inclusion of image-bearing regions.
I agree. But then Colin goes on to write:
One can only speculate as to why the three labs agreed to go ahead and test contiguous specimens…
Only speculate? No, there is a lot of history. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Colin does speculate:
Maybe they had been drawn in on a false prospectus, and felt that to back out at the last minute under a media spotlight would have exposed them to charges of insensitivity to "understandable" concern about maintaining the integrity of a holy icon.
Colin, are you sure its not “Mickey Mouse science” by a “bunch of jokers” who are “idiots”? Of course not. So are you suggesting serious ethical breaches on the part of the scientists in the labs, the British Museum, etc.?
Methinks somebody has placed the wrong construction on my comment, like failing to spot that “integrity” referred to “physical integrity”. But why am I having to say this under yet another title that attempts to pillory me for no good reason? Why could not any misunderstanding have been addressed in the comments thread?
Now then, when are folk on this site going to address the real scandal where Shroud so-called science is concerned, namely the attempt to reject scorching by contact/heat conduction, with resort to Mickey Mouse science or reasoning?
Here’s a reminder, if any is needed, that a single-cell thick sheet of plants cells (onion epidermis) can be heavily scorched with no effect on underlying linen.
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/dsc02940.jpg
The idea, constantly touted, that scorching has to affect the entire layer of fabric, including the reverse side, with no possibility of fine-tuning, is at best misinformation, possibly deliberate DISINFORMATION. And why? I shall tell you why. It is a delaying tactic, an attempt to etain some fig leaf of credibility for the absurd, unscientific claim that the image could have been produced by some kind of electromagnetic radiation (cue miraculous flashes of uv or x-rays). More semi-deranged Mickey Mouse science. Have the proponents of this nonsense nothing better to do than waste their time and ours with this kind of lunacy?
Well Max I must say I agree with you that the scourch method of an image has not been proven to be impossible or even improbable. Most people are still talkng about draping the shroud over a bas-relief or statue and not taking into consideration your actual method. But in saying that; I think it’s imparitive that one produce this scourch image before one can be ‘recognized’, and that means producing all the attributes science has told us about the Shroud image including the superficiality of both the complete front and the partial back side images. There is probably some hypothesis not thought up yet that could explain it, but as it stands today no method has reproduced the image to it’s full extent. As for the ‘electromagnetic’ radiation i.e. “miraculous flashes” hypothesis I also would state to you as I have to others here; Until you can claim to understand all there is to understand about nature or the universe, it is a little premature to exclude those ideas out of hand don’t you think?.
R
Why do people make such a meal about this superficiality thing, and make ludicrous claims that superficial scorching is impossible? One might as well claim that it’s impossible to brush against an electric iron without risking a third degree burn. There are at least 4 variables that can be independently controlled to get a light scorch affecting the most superficial part of a linen fibre – temperature, application pressure, application time, and presence or absence of a cool and/or damp underlay to act as heat sink.
I have today reproduced an earlier experiment with some better controls – the one that showed one can selectively scorch a sheet of onion epidermis – just one cell thick – with no appreciable effect on an underlying sheet of linen.
Superficiality is NOT a problem, neither in theory nor practice. Let’s move on shall we?
As for radiation, it’s simply a non-starter (although that has not deterred the distractionists and obscurantists from constantly invoking it is as the “likely” or “most promising” model, basically because it serves the purpose of further mystifying the Shroud, instead of demystifying. Radiation is ruled out for the simple reason that production of electromagnetic waves by some miraculous process does not result in an image if there is no focusing or collimating system in place. Neither is there any known means of producing ultraviolet radiation or x-rays from a non-incandescent or non-irradiated material, e,g, a corpse, and even low energy infrared and visible light have their problems – they cannot scorch if there is nothing to absorb them. There’s a basic law of physics – no absorption, no action – and there’s still the absence of lens, mirrors etc to bring to a focus.
Yup, it’s a scorch, and a superficial one, at least initially, affecting the thread crowns, and that is a signature of a contact scorch, probably from hot metal – but that’s not what folk want to hear. No problem if it’s ordinary folk – it being a free country. That so-called scientists should be part of a huge distraction exercise is something else… My feelings towards them are one of disgust and contempt…
Just noticed my error, my comment was directed at Colin, sorry Max. ;-P
R
I think the labs must have been employing the “Suck it and see it” method in order to debunk the Mickey Mouse science on the Euro-Disney Shroud. Makes sense.
I don’t believe I’ve heard anyone say creating a superficial scorch is impossible, and if so easily possible as you say, then produce one and shut everyone up! But that is not the only aspect your dealing with here Colin and you know that quite well, don’t you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again it’s one thing to scorch some linen, it’s another to do so with ALL the attributes accompanying that scorch. And that includes creating a scorch which doesn’t fluoresce, a scorch that will create a detailed image with 3D distance information, a scorch that will not effect the blood covering the shroud or bas-relief/statue, …So not so simple when everything is taken into account is it Colin? Anyways, this is only one aspect of the Shroud, there are numerous others to deal with that when one contemplates all of these aspects (as a whole) which we find on the Shroud, one wonders how anyone can possibly refute it’s authenticity?…That is my stand Colin, in opposition to yours and other skeptics and until someone can refute the Shroud with ‘proven’ scientific and peer-reviewed methods, my mind will not change.
R
Ron, he knows he can’t reproduce it. He’s an intelligent man and deep down inside he knows how long the odds are that he’s right. Something in the way he goes on tells me it may be that he needs the shroud to be fake far more than we want it to be real.
As i’ve said elsewhere, fluorescence may be a characteristic of a fresh scorch, but if you don’t know the precise fluorochrome(s) responsible, the conditions that favour their formation, their stability with age or history of exposure to fluorescence quenching agents, then you cannot hold them up as some kind of be all and end all – it’s simply unscientific to seize on things that one does not understand – and I include myself in that. As for 3D images, the 1532 burns also show “encoded 3D information”, so did John Jackson’s bas relief , and so has every scorch I have produced on linen. So called 3D encoding is not just a characteristic of scorches – the very act of creating one with a 3D object that has contours and different contact pressure points makes it an ideal subject for that kind of relief imprinting. What do the radiationists have to offer re 3D encoding? Nothing. I repeat – nothing – it’s all empty rhetoric, intellectually bankrupt obscurantism.
Yes, there may be tweaking required here and there to reproduce the precise degree of fidelity v distortion – but why make a fetish of the technical details. What matters are the scientific principles – unless one is using technical perfectionism as a means of obstructing progress and understanding – and it’s now abundantly clear to me that quite a number of so-called scientists have been doing just that.
Who says the scorch does not, or did not, affect the blood. Rogers’ “data” on that scarcely qualifies for that description, being cobbled- together tendentious ad hoc untried and untested methodology that was presented as if it were the last word on the matter. Yes, there is every reason to think that haemoglobin will be partially denatured by the temperatures that scorch linen, but centuries of ageing will have the same effect Kindly tell me how one is supposed to distinguish between the two, especially bearing in mind the extra heat exposure with the 1532 fire.
Yes, i refute its authenticity, because I accept the C14-dating, regarding Rogers’ claims as scarcely credible, and in any case the campaign to discredit and denigrate the
three labs for producing the wrong answer is yet another seedy and despicable aspect of this whole affair. Would there have been this intensely close scrutiny of their methodology had they come up with the “right” answer?
As Tom Chivers said a few months ago: “The Shroud is a fake. Get over it…”
Actually Colin I haven’t yet viewed an ‘attempted’ scourch image (yours included especially) with 3D aspects as perfect as the Shroud, close maybe, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand granades. Your answer to the non- flourescence sounds like a cop-out to me, sorry….Actually I believe it may have been Ray Rogers that stated the 1532 fire and heat from the fire had definately affected the blood close to the burn marks but not anyother blood…
So, R.Rogers peer-reviewed paper is scarcely credible now, aren’t you lucky people didn’t view your peer-reviewed papers that way?. There is no agenda to discredit and denigrate the three labs Bod, they did it to themselfs, the evidence is clear: So get over it.
R
” as perfect as the Shroud…”? Perfect in what crespect? In photogenic appeal? Someone who had been crucified? We have no way of knowing if what we judge as perfect on aesthetic grounds bears any relation to accuravy of imprinting, since we do not know what the subject looked like – or even if it was a cadaver or a bronze statue…
A cop-our on fluorescence? Maybe you can explain to me why dehydrated/oxidized/crosslinked components on the Shroud are non-fluorescent while similar looking scorches from the 1532 fire are. If you can’t, then I would suggest that it is you who is engaged in a cop out in trying to avoid getting involved at anything more than the most superficial level with something where you don’t have the chemical background .I don’t hold a lack of chemical background against you, but I can’t say as I care for internet dilettantes who take the tools of science and then proceed to crudely weaponise them, turning them on scientists who dare to question your orthodoxy. I am not at all impressed. In fact, if the truth be told, I am hugely bored and underwhelmed with this kind of ritualistic sniping.that substitutes for genuine open-ended research and scholarship.
Rogers test for heated blood was bizarre in the extreme. It was based on whether the blood lost hydroxyproline on heating. Fact: hydroxyproline is a solid, non-volatile amino acid, so how can it be lost on heating? Fact: there are only traces of hydroxyproline in the blood, this unusual modified amino acid being a breakdown product of connective tissue, mainly collagen. It has been described as a marker in the meat industry for just that – for meat, for heated meat – i.e. muscle/connective tissue – not heated blood. Inappropriate off-the-shelf methodology? There is also the small point that the Shroud “blood” is so highly degraded by age that it scarcely qualifies for that description anyway. Rogers few words on that heating test are written in a highly peremptory, some might say tetchy manner. One might suspect he was scraping the barrel for arguments against the image being a scorch, and that the scorch suggestion was not one to which he was enamoured – but had no alternative to offer. I rather fear that he was getting frustrated and/or losing his scientific objectivity at that point in his career. Indeed, one has to ask what it was that motivated an explosives chemist without clinical pathology experience (that I am aware of) to make so drastic a shift in career focus.
You are someone else who likes to bandy around the “peer review” mantra – another example of weaponising the scientific method to attack science. Having myself peer-reviewed scores of papers, and been on the receiving end too naturally, i can tell you that it is generally only the grossest of errors that are detected by a referee, who usually has to take a great deal on trust (like that bizarre hydroxyproline test). Never could that be truer than a situation in which a handful of individuals have privileged access to a few fragments or threads of material, and who are forced to adopt often unconventional visual micro-spotting techniques which yield little or non quantitative data, and where the reporting and interpretation of results looks somewhat impressionistic to say the least .
OK, this is the internet, and I expect the flak as soon as I put my head above the parapet. You may score points with this or that debating point, but you will not undermine the intuition, confidence and nose for a bum claim that 50 years of study, research and teaching have given me in the chemical and biochemical sciences. Yours and others knocking copy – Dan’s especially (I’ve gone right off Dan) is simply water off a duck’s back. Start making some genuine scientific points and I might feel more inclined to talk to you, rather than at you…
You and Dan may be pleased to know that I am fast running out of things to say on this site. It would have been nice to hear back from Dr.Di Lazzaro after I told him what I thought of his heated coin test, and of my own (I consider) better-designed experiments using a range of temperatures chosen empirically to give light scorching, and latterly with a better heat sink than the initial moist sand, and not forgetting the onion epidermis model etc. And I’d still like to know, before signing off, in what way I have been “misleading” in the few words I have spoken regarding that John Jackson work with the hot metal. .
Colin, this is what you have done from day 1 here – talk at people. It’s plain to see you’re not interested in actual scientific exchange otherwise you would have accepted to join the other scientists in their association when offered. You won’t go there and debate them, you’d rather stay here and beat laymen over the head with your knowledge of science. Make you feel good? Why don’t you pick on someone you’re own size, huh? You don’t because you probably know you’ll get run out of town on a rail and therefore won’t dare tread amongst minds as keen as you fancy you’re own. Nice of you to pick on dead men as well, so honorable.
One needn’t be as knowledgeable as the person who’s conning him in order to realize he’s being conned. The fact that you constantly talk with forked tongue about how easy it would be for a forger to have made the shroud and how all it’s observed characteristics are nothing to be in awe of but yet you refuse to undertake the effort to reproduce it speaks volumes about what you’re real intentions are here. It’s all so easy, just a bunch arts and crafts until you’re asked to get in the arena and reproduce it. The thought of actually having to turn something out which will then come under the withering scrutiny of other scientists probably gives you hives. You’d rather burn a few trinkets into a cloth, blithely declare it’s a fair demonstration and call it a day. Then comes the endless leaving, but not leaving and the carping about having to deal with us. But you can’t stay away. I think you love it and not for good reasons.
And when all this bad behavior is pointed out to you, you cry “Ad hom, ad hom! No fair!” What are folks to make of you when you act this way? What kind of respect is anyone supposed to give a grown man, who is retired no less, who only likes debating his inferiors in matters of his discipline? You’re indignation at our responses is laughable.
I don’t know what you expect to achieve at this point but in my opinion it’s moot. Good day to you.
I know plenty of scientists who would never dream of venturing anywhere near an internet forum, knowing they face the kind of semi-hysterical drivel that you have just dumped on me Chris. And good day to you too.
When I first heard the results of the C14 tests, I couldn’t help but think that the scientists involved had somehow conspired to lie to the public. It is hard to think that I was alone. Of course we now know why the tests were invalid, but I don’t think it is fair to criticize Colin for coming to more or less the same conclusion, but from a skeptic’s point of view.
That being said, I think the honest skeptic will admit that his or her belief that the shroud is fake is at odds with what is known about the cloth. “Someday science will show how it is a fake” seems the most honorable position for the doubters. Perhaps people like Colin resist this stance because it is uncomfortably too close to admitting it is likely genuine.
But why waste time with dialogue? Eventually the “discussion” degenerates to the point where the one who is defending the indefensible pretends that by not changing his/her mind, he actually has a point. Would anyone seriously argue with someone who insists on a 6 day creation? This is an extreme example, but still valid. Whatever it is that causes the person to adopt a ridiculous stance, it certainly isn’t the evidence. Arguing about it does no good. There is something else at work here.
Let Colin believe whatever he wishes, I say. I seriously doubt that the message of this “silent witness” is that those who reject it go to hell. We’re told that only those who reject the Spirit of God are damned. Though Jesus is the voice and presence of this eternal reality in history, he no doubt knew that people could be honestly mistaken about him as a historical figure (to say nothing about those born before his historical manifestation). If the Shroud of Turin is a splinter in Colin’s subconscious, depriving him of peace of mind vis a vis his worldview, it is ultimately HIS problem. In my opinion, you’re wasting calories arguing with the guy.
Best of luck, Colin, but you’ve got your head DEEP in the sand, pal.
I would have been a sceptic even without a science background. Why would the Creator of Heaven and Earth leave physical evidence of a presence on Earth in the form of a faint imprint on a Shroud with no mentions in any of the four synoptic Gospels, indeed anywhere in the New Testament, then have it hidden away for 13 centuries, then have Popes declare it a forgery, and then have generations of the faithful needing to be content with a non-photogenic negative image until silver salt photography had been developed in the 19th century and then have it declared a forgery based on state-of-the art 20th century C-14 dating? Why would that entity have concentrated the scorch on crown fibres, making it look for all the world like a plain old contact scorch with hot metal and have supposedly smart scientists even deny the image was a scorch in the face of all the evidence that it IS a scorch? Or are we supposed to see it as a divine game of Cluedo?
Sorry, but any Divine entity that is capable of creating the heavens and earth in just 6 days could, and probably would have managed things better than that… The key term there is probably. Sensible folk make their own estimates of probability. They do not passively accept other people’s rose-tinted probability calculations…
There are certain truths which are almost cold and hard, like 2 and 2 make 4. No one really cares about these truths on a personal level.
But what if there were certain truths which pertained to relationships? Certainly “I love you” is a truth, however fleeting, which sometimes exists among people. This is a truth between two living beings, not something cold and impersonal like 2 and 2 make 4.
The JudeoChristian religion is the story of a revelation about the relationship between almighty God and humanity (for those of us who believe it). Indeed, it is the story of God’s relationship to his entire creation (with mankind as the conscious element of it). God’s manifestation was born in a manger….but as a man. And not any man, either. He was born as a Jew: the people who, however imperfectly, stumbled upon the dichotomy between good and evil, and grounded it in a story of God, and rebellion against him (ie, they had Genesis as their foundational text). In paganism, even the worst of gods was prayed to. But for the Jews, the devil would always be the devil, and God would always be God. For them, evil will always be evil, and God will always be God. That’s not something you can say about paganism, can you? Again, in paganism, even the most vile of gods was to be prayed to.
Dismiss Genesis as Bronze Age superstition all you want, but these Bronze Age people were the ONLY ones to stumble upon the dichotomy of Good and Evil (grounding it in beings known as God, and the devil). Even the Greeks couldn’t grasp the nature of evil. They posited ethics, NOT morality. For them, the law was written in the mind, not the heart. Transgressions against the law of the cosmos could be due to weakness, ignorance, or stupidity….but never immorality. Ultimately, immorality was a reality which they knew existed, but which they could never fully explain. It was the Jews who knew the law existed in the heart.
Who CARES if Peter and Paul believed in a literal Genesis. Do you really think God would expect them to tell the heathens of the spiritual foundation of the world, AND tell them that the universe was 13 or so billion years old TOO?
As far as I’m concerned, God manifested himself to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth. It was he who purified and distilled the striking dichotomy found only in the Jewish myths. Yalweh may have supposedly approved of the bloody conquest of Palestine (while still viewing the Caananites as his children), but it was Jesus who in essence said that violence was never sacred. The Jews may have been entitled to fight for their lives, but it was for them, not God. Render unto Caesar…
That Jesus of Nazareth quite possibly used the Jewish tradition as a light for mankind, telling us that ALL decent people (those who knowingly or unknowingly listen to the voice of God), will be saved and taken to the TRUE promised land, the kingdom of God (not blood soaked palestine), –that the carpenter from Nazareth ultimately told humanity this message and paid for it with is life, I can’t help but feel is a divine message, applicable to all people at all times.
And no truth can be destroyed, can it?. It just IS. Like the Jewish God, ay?
What was it that God told Moses? “I am who IS”. Likewise, Jesus IS, hence his (alleged) victory over death.
That Moses was a man of his time, and his “reality” was expressed however imperfectly…..well, what would you expect? God has a relationship to PEOPLE, not computers. And if some people lived in the Bronze Age…..well, do you really expect them to express themselves as YOUR contemporary?
Anyway, Colin. If you think that belief in Jesus of Nazareth is exemplified in the most provincial and idiotic of beliefs, you really need to get out more. However clumsily I have tried to clue you in to the fact that “Chrisitianity” goes far deeper than most of its detractors care to admit. And if you call yourself a thinking person, be honest and address THOUGHTFUL versions of Christianity, not just straw men easily demolished. You’re an academic aren’t you? Do your HOMEWORK Colin.
Perhaps this inexplicable “Image of a serene, bearded man” is a subtle message to you that maybe, juuust maybe, there is something to the ancient yet eternal message from the carpenter from Nazareth.
all the best.
tony
How could you for a second believe you could understand or question whatsoever, what or how God would or wouldn’t do things? …seriously.
The other way of looking at all your questions above Colin is; How did a humble linen cloth with a light scorch: (if thats what you’d like to believe), manage to exist two mellenia thru so much turmoil, catastrophies, (man made or by nature) and persecutions to still be here in 2012 to have a retired sciencebod trying to refute it’s provenance? Sometimes God gives us signs in a very subtle and humble way, it is up to us to recognise these signs and it is usually recognised by the heart first.
R
1: God did not create the earth in six days. “Each day in Genesis is an age” (Pope John XXiii to Nikita Kruschev). God is timeless!
2: No Pope to my knowledge has ever declared the Shroud a fraud.
3: There are three synoptic gospels, not four! (John’s is not classified as a synoptic.)
4: The reason why the image is not mentioned in the gospels, is that the first Christians were born into a Jewish culture, and to whom any kind of image was anathema. So Jesus had to show them it was OK to have images of him. But the lesson has been slow to take.
5. The reason why God allowed scientists to make an error in the C14 dating, is so they might learn some humility. This lesson has also been slow to take (evident on this site for example). “My ways are not your ways. It is the Lord who speaks!”
6. I enjoyed my breakfast toast this morning, prepared entirely without any contact process, and also I didn’t scorch it. I guess it must have been some kind of radiation, possibly infra-red, although the element also showed some visible red light as well. In the days before electricity, my Mum used to make us toast over a fire without it ever touching the coals (which showed blue light). My Dad could do much the same thing barbecuing sausages.
Re the number of synoptic Gospels – yes, you are absolutely correct. That was a slip of the memory on my part.
Re toasting bread, you are again correct, well, sort of, but only in an exceedingly narrow sense that would seem to have little or no bearing on the nature of the Shroud image (unless you are saying that the emitting body was itself red hot).
With actual physical contact and conduction there can be an intense scorch, but if one has the slightest air gap there is none whatsoever.
However, it one were to contrive a means of placing some linen into a toaster, e.g. by attaching a square to a slice of white bread, then one would indeed see the linen scorch as well as the bread (I’ve done the experiment). It would be a diffuse scorch, one that was not confined to the thread crowns (as per Shroud) and one would not expect to see any well-defined imaging, e.g. of the red hot electric elements.
So why is there radiation scorching under these extreme conditions? It’s because of the Boltzmann distribution of emitted frequencies. To get enough emission of visible red light for an element to glow red hot, one needs an incandescent element that is at 750 degrees C or higher. But there is so much intense (albeit) invisible infrared radiation accompanying that visible light that even the slightest opacity and absorption by linen (or bread) is enough to cause absorption and scorching. In other words – scorching by radiation is possible in the immediate vicinity of INCANDESCENT bodies, emitting huge amounts of infrared radiation.
Incidentally, bread in that above experiment produces an attractive golden-bown toast colour, which is primarily a Maillard reaction product between carbohydrate and protein. The scorched linen will be a darker, less attractive colour, since lacking as it does appreciable amounts of protein, the scorching is via pyrolysis of polysaccharides alone, i.e. hemicellulose and cellulose to produce dehydrated, oxidised, cross-linked products.
The principle of minor/mimimal absorption of radiation building additively to produce near total absorption is seen in storm clouds. Each individual droplet of water is almost transparent to visible white light. But if sunlight tries to pass through millions of suspended droplets then most of it is finally absorbed so as to make the cloud look grey or black to an observer on the ground. But we would still say that water is transparent to light as a general rule of thumb. There are always exceptions that prove (test) the rule.
It is not difficult to see why the miracle school of shroud imagery likes to invoke visible light, ultraviolet or x-rays, studiously ignoring the copious amounts of infrared radiation that generally accompany them in the real world of conventional physics. Given the relative proportions of the different wavelengths,it is the infrared component that would be the first to scorch or toast any organic material in sight – with no pretty images being formed…. Scorching by direct contact on the other hands DOES produce images (“branding”), and they are light/dark reversed, and they are superficial,or can be, and show encoded 3D information, and, as said earlier they are confined initially to the the crowns of the threads. More boring old conventional chemistry and physics… But scorching by direct contact would destroy the mystery, would it not, and Russ Breault would have nothing left for his Magical Mystery Tour road show. which I see has been updated to include the side-splitting media reports from Di Lazzaro and those other ENSA clowns…
Well Colin we have all listened to your Hypothesis here for months now. It’s time to finally put the effort in and create your scourch image, with all it’s known attributes of course. Once competed have it varified and you’ll be rich and famous throughout the world!…On the other hand, if your not willing to varify your insistent claims, maybe it’s time to clam up, take up fishing or painting or something! But I for one, am tired of listening and not seeing any evidence.
R
Ron is right.
If you are so confident that your hypothesis is correct, then all you have to do is realize it and fame and fortune are yours. If you DON’T choose to go down that route, then no matter how many times you lie to yourself, deep down you will always know that your “hypothesis” is really just denial.
World-wide fame and lucrative book deals/interviews await, Colin. What’s keeping you?
You won’t be seeing any artefacts from me, Ron – beyond the small ones I have reported already (to demonstrate the scientific principles, to wit, scorching by direct contact with a hot surface to produce a superficial pseudo-negative with encoded 3D information). I leave it to TV programme-makers etc with their ample budgets to provide “compelling visual evidence” for those that need concrete and tangible evidence before their eyes (or should that be metallic evidence?)
If you cannot understand why that is a valid position for a scientist to take – then you simply do not understand how science operates. As I said earlier, no palaeontologist felt the slightest obligation or compunction to reproduce the Piltdown skull to know it was a forgery.
I’m quite happy to vacate this site if your wish,Ron – not wishing to outstay my welcome. My departure would be speeded if folk here were to stop addressing their comments to me directly, since I’m certain that some here would be sure to make capital from any failure on my part to respond……
PS: that response could serve equally well for Tony, who has not said anything essentially different from Ron. Fame and fortune? Where is there fame and fortune to be found in stating the bleeding obvious?
I don’t want you leave Colin, that would be rude of me, I’d just like you to complete your hypothesis that’s all (practically). I would think if you were so sure in your convictions, you would want too.
Maybe you could write Picnett & Prince, they’ve made loads of money off trying to dispel the Shroud’s authenticity, they may even sponsor you and then you could co-author a book about it!
Plus it’ll give you something interesting to do, other then wasting all your time on the internet.
Think about it Bod.
R
My job as a scientist is largely done – at least in a proactive experimental sense – having provided the ideas that distinguish between mechanisms, notably conduction v radiation. I leave it now to a technologist who has time on his hands to convert those ideas into a tangible end-product – though I suspect few would regard making a life-size facsimile copy of the Shroud, complete with blood stains etc as a useful or desirable end-product, except perhaps for some fleeting media fame.
Why not ask Dr.Di Lazzaro and his ENSA pals with their uv lasers to produce an image – any kind of image – instead of being content with a tiny brown blemish on linen. And you accuse me of being a publicity-seeker!
Are you aware that every word I have spoken on the Shroud has been confined to this site, and to Tom Chivers’ and my own blogs? Since when has the blogosphere been high-profile?
“One can only speculate as to why the three labs agreed to go ahead and test contiguous specimens…”
They tested contiguous samples, founds 5% signifignacy, decided to publish. One may find out it has been the biggest mistake of C14 dating history.
Nowadays scientists would be more carefull (cf Dr Ramsey himself).
What’s wrong with “5% significancy”, anoxie? The universally recognized test of statistical significance is for p<0.05, i.e. that the probability that any observed difference arose purely by chance as a result of random sampling error is less than 5%, or 1 in 20. If someone offered you odds on tossing a coin such that you pay a dollar if he wins, but stand to gain 19 dollars if you win, would you not accept the bet? I would…
Yes, I know the samples taken for analysis were not random, which would render any statistical significance test invalid, but that's a different issue altogether from criticizing, as you appear to be doing, the so-called "95%" level of significance.
Nothing wrong, just a coincidence. Here p=0.05, perfect, but that is the lowest significancy admitted.
Now, if the basic assumption (samples are homogeneous) is challenged, a/ C14 datation can’t be applied b/ it explains why the significancy is so dramatically low.
When they published the article in 1986, no one could imagine that the samples were slightly different… and they didn’t bother to analyse them, chemically or physically.
Yo Colin, I think your reading me wrong here! …I never suggested in my comment you were a publicity seeker and I, in the past, have agreed with you about the UVU experiments not having much meaning. So don’t go shitting on me. I am merely trying to get you to do what you should do, and that is complete your hypothesis with a working model. If funds are a problem, I was not joking about contacting the people mentioned, they would probably be enticed by your hypothesis since their last theory is dead in the water…they would also probably see a profit in helping you. Plus I don’t think it would be neccessary to use a full size scale model or to even complete a dorsal/front image. I’ve mentioned it before; find a reasonable sized statue or relief and use that. Aslong as the image created can mirror the attributes of the Shroud image, that’s really all that counts.
R
Sure, I could give it a try, but you know as well as I the kind of response it would elicit, and that’s as likely as not to be on aesthetic as scientific grounds. “Dreadful! Hopeless! He does not look anything like as serene as on the “real” Shroud”.
Yup, “serene” – that was a description of the Shroud image just a day or two ago. One wonders how serene any of us would look after enduring the most unimaginable torture, and, at least according to some, still with muscles locked in a state of rigor mortis……
Well Colin that is something you know you’ll have to contend with as just the image formation is not the end all here. There are so many other evidences on the Shroud opposing it being a fraud. The linen itself, most definately not of medieval manufacture, anatomically correct blood flows depicting precise crucifixion angles, scourge wounds identical to a Roman whip not seen since the 4th century etc; etc; All this and what you say makes no difference as all you have to accomplish is to scourch linen equally across the whole image to a depth of .0002 and only on the very top surfaces of the fibrels. This image must also show to be 3d under a vp-8 image analyzer and have a reasonably realistic quality when seen as a positive and I would say your point would be proven! If I missed anything here guys don;t be afraid to chime in, but that is all I think is needed to prove your hypothsis atleast making it porbable.
What do you think of that Colin?
R
Sorry typo error; Not porbable but probable.
There’s too much there to answer succinctly, and a lot of those points have been addressed before. But to take just three:
Superficiality of image: the 200nm thickness corresponds to the outermost primary cell wall (PCW) with loosely packed hemicellulose and cellulose fibrils. There are good theoretical grounds for thinking those exposed and vulnerable polysaccharides can be selectively scorched without affecting the underlying secondary cell wall with its highly ordered chemically-resistant cellulose. One can selectively scorch a sheet of dried onion epidermis – just one cell thick- two PCWs – with no scorching of underlying linen, as I reported recently.
Only the top surface of threads, and of a few fibrils? Yup, that is the signature of scorching by contact with a hot surface, as in ancient branding technology. It’s scorching by contact/conduction that allows one to achieve that kind of superficiality, which is impossible with any kind of radiation, which gives a more diffuse coloration.
3D encoding: there is no mystery there. All the scorch images I have produced respond to 3D software. So did the 1532 burns, and so did the bas relief models in Jackson’s experiments. One can quibble about this or that detail, but who is to say that the Shroud image is closer to the appearance of the imaged subject than any other. 3D imaging is simply knob-twiddling. There is no science there whatsoever if you have no definite information as to how the original image was formed.
3D images can be made to look really seductive in the hands of a true artist. Merely arranging to get an oblique viewing angle as if paying one’s respects to reclining deceased loved one can undermine strict scientific objectivity…
Well Bod enough talk “just do it” as the once very popular slogan goes ;-)
Anyways about your onion experiment, and your link to a picture in your first post above; Notice anything peculiar in your picture? …No? …Well let me point it out; not only did you scorch thru the single layer onion skin but you actually scorched the linen somewhat, take a good look again. Does this give you any ideas?
R
“..not only did you scorch thru the single layer onion skin but you actually scorched the linen somewhat, take a good look again. Does this give you any ideas?”
I’m not sure how you arrived at that Ron. You are aware, aren’t you, that I left an unpeeled section of the onion epidermis in place, corresponding with the centre screw on the template (an aluminium pencil sharpener)?
Or as your referring to the exceedingly faint yellow cast on the linen? I doubt very much if that is a scorch. It is more likely a film of caramelised onion. I could launder that bit of linen to confirm, but is it worth it? Do you not consider it remarkable that one can produce a heavy scorch on something just one cell thick, with virtually no effect on the underlying linen? Yet a lot of heat transfers through, as i know from using a damp underlay, and seeing the steam coming up. provided one does not overdom the temperature, the bulk of the cellulose survives virtually intact. There is little doubt in my mind that a clear distinction needs to be drawn between cellulose crystallites in the secondary cell walls (highly stable) and more reactive and superficial polysaccharides in the PCW. Rogers to his credit grasped that point through seeing the presence of the image in a detachable film under the microscope. He tried to link it with starch and Saponaria acquired in processing, the latter having pentosan sugars, but it was later authors who realized that the outermost layer of linen fibres is the primary cell wall, and that the latter has very loosely packed hemicellulose (with reactive pentose sugars) and non-crystalline cellulose. There is a clear rationale here for selective scorching of a very thin superficial layer(200nm) as a consequence of both botanical and chemical factors. So it’s pointless arguing that a forger had achieved an impossible degree of precision if it is the layered coaxial structure of each and every linen fibre that gives rise to the phenomenon of highly superficial scorching. It would be like a fireman marvelling that the insulation had been selectively burned off electrical wiring while the copper cores remained intact…
Bod why do you always take what I say in a negative sense? I was thinking more in the line that yes it looks like a slight scorch left on the linen and I don’t see any trace of onion there, so I was thinking that it looks quite superficial, so, maybe there is something to it. Like placing a film over a bas-relief ?//?
Nevermind….
Sorry. My misunderstanding… :-(