On October 6th, I posted Breaking News: Sources of DNA on the Shroud of Turin. I was reporting that Nature had just the previous day published Uncovering the sources of DNA found on the Turin Shroud by Gianni Barcaccia, Giulio Galla, Alessandro Achilli, Anna Olivieri and Antonio Torroni.
On October 14th, I followed with Linen from India? after getting a prompting email from a reader.
Now the MSM may be catching on. There is a story here, after all.
- The Huffington Post has Shroud Of Turin DNA Indicates Global Origins.
- Turin Shroud: DNA and pollen from all over the world found on cloth, new study finds, from The Independent, 14 October 2015.
- Mystery of the Shroud of Turin deepens: Genetic study reveals the fabric contains DNA from plants found all over the world, in the Daily Mail, on October 19th.
- Yahoo News, about 40 minutes ago, posted Mystery Over Turin Shroud – It Contains Plant DNA From All Over The World.
Nothing yet in the biggies or on the major news services.
HEADLINES AND LEDES DEPARTMENT: (yes LEDE is the correct spelling), the Daily Mail may have gotten it best. No, really, the Daily Mail:
ONE TRACK MINDS OFF THE RAILS DEPARTMENT: Stephen Jones, in re-captioning this diagram from Nature, tries to tell us:
… this is further evidence against the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud … and evidence for that the 1260-1390, i.e. 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date was computer-generated by a hacker’s (allegedly Arizona physicist Timothy W. Linick’s) program.
Click on diagram to enlarge.
I click on the Huffington Post article and I read “A group of Italian researchers have found that the 14-foot-long garment — believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, even though scientific research suggests that’s not the case — contains DNA from plants found all over Earth.” Great assertion to your readers with no evidence whatsoever to back it up.
If that wasn’t bad enough I scrolled down, and looked at the comments.
I was recently mortified to read that the present editor of that scurrilous journal the Huffington Post is an expatriate New Zealander. She seems to be continuing its tradition of publishing half-truths. It’s perhaps not too surprising that there has been global sourced DNA present on the Shroud cloth; Pilgrims from all over the world had been flocking to view its several earlier ‘al fresco’ expositions.
If the Shroud emerged from a hidden unknown source today, it’s doubtful it would get past Customs bio-security clearance. Paper this morning published an article of a NZ art-work locked up in Australian Customs for the past five years for this reason. They’re now considering destroying it. We always suspected they were philistines over there.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/73238285/shots-fired-at-aussie-philistines-after-kiwi-artwork-quarantined