imageGrand Island, Nebraska, is the county seat of mostly rural Hall County, Nebraska. It is a city of about 50,000 people on the Platt River and Interstate 80, two hours west of Omaha.  According to a story on The Grand Island Independent, yesterday: 

There is an amazing display coming to Grand Island this week which is very unique. “The Man of the Shroud” is a national exhibit unbiased in nature and non-denominational. You can view a life –size 14-by-3-foot display that replicates the holy Shroud of Turin which many believe is the burial cloth of Jesus.

I’ve blogged about this traveling exhibit on display throughout Nebraska sponsored by the Spirit Catholic Radio. So far, reports in the media have been accurate and sparse on detail. However, this one contains a real doozy. Not a word of this next paragraph from The Grand Island Independent  is true after the first sentence. Nothing is even slightly true. I’m wondering where this highly imaginative information came from:

This is a replica of the original Shroud of Turin. The original Shroud has had over 600,000 hours of research on it by scientists the last 30 years with over 2,000 scientists doing modern research. Most of those that worked on the Shroud were either atheist or agnostics but over 90 percent of them have become Christian after studying the Shroud. Pope John Paul II called the Shroud, “The greatest relic of Christendom.”

Such pure rubbish gets around unfortunately. That is a major problem with the Internet. I found a brief mention on another site that reads:

The Shroud has over 600,000 hours of study, and of the scientists that did study the shroud, 95% of the are now Christian.

and another site, greatspiritualbattle.com speaks of 600,000 hours of “peer reviewed” research. The claims that “most of those” who worked on the shroud were atheist or agnostic is simply ridiculous. 

Hat tip to Louis for spotting this.