David Goulet, known to those who read some of the more insightful comments in this blog, has an article, The mystery of the Shroud, in Barrys Bay This Week (that’s Barrys Bay, Ontario):
I haven’t written for a while about one of my favourite topics, the Shroud of Turin – the alleged burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Given the upswing in interest in the controversial relic this past year it’s time to take a look at it again.
I’ve been following two Shroud blogs, ahem, religiously. The first is shroud.com which is run by the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association (STERA) and host Barry Schwortz. It is an archive for all the scientific papers.
Another site is Dan Porter’s shroudstory.com where there’s a daily sifting of the latest Shroud news. It’s frequented by several skeptics who are quick to attack any hint of pseudo-science. Many posters are obviously believers in the Shroud’s authenticity. This leads to passionate exchanges that often turn into schoolyard shouting matches. Fun stuff.
One of the more interesting Shroudies (as Shroud followers are nicknamed) is Canadian Yannick Clement who, though not a professional scientist, brings a pure science approach to his observations. Yannick recently distilled his conclusions about the Shroud into four possibilities:
Go ahead and read more at The mystery of the Shroud.
And as David notes:
A favourite tactic, sadly, is to launch ad hominem attacks at the opposition’s experts – like legal attorneys desperate to undermine witness testimony via character assassination.
David Goulet wrote: “This leads to passionate exchanges that often turn into schoolyard shouting matches. Fun stuff.” (It does seem Dan enjoys FAR TOO MUCH at times to the extend somebody has to remind he is ‘the moderator’)
As I said on another thread: “If ONLY Doctor Colin Berry could stick to his element aka chemical/comical matter”…
Urgent message to site “moderator”, i.e. Dan Porter. This attempt by MPH and others to pillory me on your site must cease, and cease immediately. Yes, I know you have blocked some of MPH’s comments, but that is not good enough, given the background of systematic harassment that I have been receiving from MPH and several others too.
For the record, it is I who operated at professorial level in the late 1980s, as the link below (just one of several I could cite) will demonstrate, when I was employed as a departmental head at an industrial research association, outwith a University, but could still find myself being invited – professor-like – to act as public examiner for a Swedish doctoral thesis, i.e. at the prestigious Lund University.
http://dreams-and-daemons.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/examining-doctoral-dissertations-seen.html
Yet you have allowed MPH to belittle my academic credentials on an almost daily basis, while an academic nonentity, with no visible track record on the internet, bar some attendances at Shroudie congresses, claims to have been a University professor some 35 years ago when that clearly was not the case. There is no evidence that he ever operated at that level. You have also allowed a Florida-based medic of Ukrainian origin, Soviet-era, to question my mental health (clear abuse of pseudo-psychiatry against a perceived dissident) and you have allowed daveb to attack my personal integrity, claiming without a shred of evidence that I engage in pseudoscience. Too cap it all, you yourself have now attempted in this posting to make a vaguely worded personal attack, and blocked at least one of my replies, possibly two, denying me the right of reply, allowing further comments to appear that attempt to blacken my credentials as a scientist and as a sane and responsible commentator.
As I say, this has to stop, and it has to stop now. I shall not make idle threats now, but rest assured there will be a corrective action taken if you continue to allow your site to be used systematically in this fashion for character assassination and/or to undermine and damage my professional credentials.
Typo: It does seem Dan enjoys them FAR TOO MUCH at times
Sorry for the typos…
Dan, I was wondering if your search engine might pick up the article. I actually wrote this before the latest dust up by some of the lads here. I really need to update that headshot.