imageOver at Academia.edu you will find “The setting for the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud by Emanuela Marinelli. This seems to be the first paper out of the Valencia Congress, April 28-30, 2012. (Tiny URL = http://tinyurl.com/cammkgx )

Abstract:

The method of radiocarbon dating, performed in 1988, placed the origin of the Shroud between 1260 and 1390 A.D.; but the reconstruction of the events that led to that analysis, and the controversy following its course, throw heavy shadows on the validity of the result. Not all the procedures followed for the completion of the radiocarbon test were regular. The history of the events and of the traumas suffered by the relic make it a difficult object, whose radiocarbon dating cannot provide reliable data. The analyzed sample, because of its peculiar characteristics, was not representative of the whole sheet. Consequently, according to the radiocarbon dating it cannot be definitely stated that the manufacture of the Shroud should be placed in the middle of the fourteenth century

Intoxication by Success (pp 15):

Gonella accuses the laboratories of “intoxication by success” and adds: “Misconducts there were tons. The colleagues of the 14C behaved in a disgusting manner. Those scientists have hatched a true plot to discredit the Shroud. At first, when they did ask us to examine a sample of the Shroud, assured us of the utmost seriousness and completeness of the analyses, along with the collaboration with the Custodian of the Shroud, that is the Bishop of Turin, and his scientific advisor, i.e. the undersigned. Driven by celebrity fever, those scientists began to turn their backs on their own commitments: no more interdisciplinary examinations, only 14C. They flooded even Rome with pressures so that Turin had to accept their conditions. They used the then president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, professor Chagas, to get the undersigned out of the way and go their own way”.

It is natural to ask Gonella: then why did the Holy See and Cardinal Ballestrero accept it?“Because Chagas – the professor of the Polytechnic says – acted alone, bypassing other academics. The Vatican was continually threatened by the laboratories themselves, who went on repeating: if you don’t leave it to us, only to us, the results will not be acceptable. So, in the end, Ballestrero had to surrender, though suffering badly. And I to submit. Also because these gentlemen did everything to support the argument that the Church was throwing a spanner in the works of science”.

Gonella explains: “It was blackmail. They put us up against the wall just with a blackmail. Either we accepted the test of 14C on the terms imposed by the laboratories, or it would break out a campaign of accusations saying the Church fears the truth and is an enemy of Science”.