What follows are Google Translations of two articles: The first is a May 19 story in the Italian language edition (and not the English language edition) of Vatican News: Shroud, dating to be redone? An international conference in Catania
The second is a May 25 article in the Catania edition of MeridioNews: The Holy Shroud may not date back to the Middle Ages. Researchers from Catania: “All the certainties were denied”
Did something get lost in the translation? Huh?
The borderline between past and present, therefore, lies in the difference between probability and certainty. “The error in the past has been to consider absolute an approximate truth.
Yes, probably certainly so. If not that, certainly probably so.
Anyway, take this as a warning. Nothing can happen without a consensus about how to go forward. We need a team of people who cannot agree but must agree on a protocol. We must include Robert Rucker and Mark Antonacci because they think the Resurrection altered the C14 date. We need some folks from Colorado, too. We need some skeptics who think we are all nuts. How about Colin Berry and Hugh Farey.? We need some wild imagination. How about Tulane professor who suggests that the shroud image and the C14 disparity is God’s coded instructions on how to annihilate baryon particles so that mankind can save the universe and build computers powerful enough to emulate the mind, consciousness and soul of everyone who has ever lived thus providing life everlasting by way of virtual reality. (Why use an unknown code in the shroud? Why not written instructions. Written instructions work but not if Google must translate them.) And we need the guy in Australia who thinks the carbon dating labs were hacked by the KGB. And me; I make for a good wack-a-mole target in thinking the image is authentic but not related to the resurrection and not natural either. As soon as we all agree on everything then I’m sure the Vatican will want us to test the shroud again.
Vatican News Article
Shroud, dating to be redone? An international conference in Catania
New data cast further shadows on the 1988 radiocarbon analysis according to which the sacred linen would be from the Middle Ages. On May 23rd at Catania, an international conference of scientists and sindonologists. Benedetto Torrisi: incorrect sampling techniques. Our studies prove it
Federico Piana – Vatican City
The dating with the radiocarbon method of the Shroud is not reliable. Everything must be redone. The analyzes that led researchers back to 1988 to analyze three tissue samples and establish with extreme certainty that the cloth was packaged over a period of time between 1260 and 1390 AD and must be completely questioned again. Numerous internationally renowned experts and sindonologists are convinced of this on the basis of ‘raw’ scientific data, which will be presented for the first time in the world in a technical conference entitled: “The dating of the Holy Shroud: everything to be redone”, scheduled for University of Catania next May 23rd.
Raw data revolutionizes the scenario
Benedetto Torrisi will also be among the participants, associate of statistics at the University of Catania. For him those data are irrefutable: “It is a statement that relies on the strength of the evidence. Thanks to the multidisciplinary meeting between sindonologists, statisticians and analysts we obtained the raw data of the surveys made at the time in the institutes of Oxford, Arizona and Zurich. This data revolutionizes the scenario. First, because greater statistical results emerged from them than in 1988. Then, analyzing them well, we were able to reach new conclusions to offer to the world scientific community “. To understand the enormous scope of the novelty, just remember that at the end of the 1988 analysis the scientific journal “Nature” published only four sampled results: “In reality – says Professor Torrisi – we have found more than sixteen sampling values”. This means casting shadows of doubt on the validity of the theories published then in “Nature”.
Incorrect sampling method
The problem of the heterogeneity of radiocarbon analysis data could be a further confirmation of the need to put everything back into question. “The lack of agreement is present not only in the results of the three individual research institutes, but is also found within the results of the same center,” explains Professor Torrisi, who judged it to be wrong, from the point of view of statistical validity and therefore of the entire operation, also the general sampling techniques of the Shroud tissue.
Overcoming radiocarbon analysis?
The scientific community that will give life to the conference of 23 May next to Catania will try to argue the reasons, evidence in hand, to request another analysis to date the Shroud. But if the C14 radiocarbon analysis is to be overcome, Professor Torrisi does not say so. Leave all the options open: “Do we need to stay radiocarbon or look at other more effective techniques? To this, perhaps, the conference will respond. I am only certain of one thing: the analysis on the Shroud must be redone ”. Perhaps to discover that it is not of medieval construction, but of the age of Jesus.
MeridioNews Article
The Holy Shroud may not date back to the Middle Ages. Researchers from Catania: “All the certainties were denied”
A study group of the Etnea University, coordinated by professor Benedetto Torrisi, states without fear that, on the dating of the sheet that perhaps wrapped Jesus, it is all to be redone. The conclusion comes after having obtained data that until now was kept secret
ANTONIA MARIA ARRABITO MAY 25TH 2019
Thirty years after the attribution of the Holy Shroud to the medieval period, a multidisciplinary Etna team led by the statistician Benedetto Torrisi reaches the opposite conclusion . “It’s all to be redone. There is full certainty that the Shroud does not date back to the Middle Ages » , the lecturer reiterates to MeridioNews after a conference at the University of Catania. “The dating is still possible through new examinations on remains never analyzed”, adds professor Paolo Di Lazzaro , deputy director of the International Center for the Shroud Studies of Turin. Torrisi rewinds the tape: “There are two focal dates in the history of the Shroud: 1988 , when the prestigious scientific journal Nature endorsed that it could date back to the years between 1260 and 1390 ; and 23 May 2019 , the date on which that certainty was publicly overturned in an irrefutable manner ». The professor of the Department of Economics in Etna refers to the scientific publication in the journal Archeometry .
The borderline between past and present, therefore, lies in the difference between probability and certainty. “The error in the past has been to consider absolute an approximate truth – the statistician continues – considering that the scientific techniques of the time could not have led to an outcome of this magnitude”. Despite this, the British Museum for years has secreted the analyzes carried out by laboratories in Arizona, Oxford and Zurich. “Three tests, it is true – adds Torrisi – but all on contaminated Shroud fabrics , which have distorted the results. The Nature magazine was perhaps also in a hurryto validate, having taken only two months. Today, however, the situation has changed ». Torrisi says that, together with Tristan Casabianca , a Shroud scholar, the team had access to the data that had been kept secret: “And so after more than a year of work we have arrived at a new truth”.
If to overcome a dogma is an inalienable beginning, the discovery remains partial. Torrisi in fact dampens the enthusiasm: “We cannot yet express ourselves on the actual dating, new analyzes are needed” . However, this would not excite the Church , owner of the fabric. The obstacle could be overcome according to the physicist Di Lazzaro. There is an alternative way : the analysis of the burnt threads of the Shroud, recovered from the Chambéry fire of 1532 . «The burns of that stake pierced the original linen. In 2002 these parts were detached and preserved separately. Using them would have a twofold advantage: to analyze the least contaminated tissue without reworking the Shroud » . Paradoxically, Di Lazzaro adds, the burns “protect the fabric from agents that over time contaminate it and, in particular, from moth-repellent thymol and mothballs , probably used for the preservation of the Shroud”.
The reliability of the analysis would then depend on the amount of carbon 14 found in the fabric, thanks to which it is possible to trace the death of any organic material , including linen. Being a plant, death coincides with the time of harvest. In order to calculate its exact age it is necessary to quantify the carbon absorbed by the atmosphere, which decays very slowly in the entities without life, even in thousands of years. “Counting the residual carbon atoms on the burnt strings of the Shroud, we could finally go back to its dating, since it was made of uncontaminated fibers from 1532”, concludes the researcher.
“We need some skeptics who think we are all nuts. How about Colin Berry and Hugh Farey?”
OK. I think you’re all nuts.
Surely not. What I mean is I think some of you may be mistaken…..
The current hoo-hah regarding the radiocarbon dating is based on one interpretation of some data first described by Remi van de Haelst some years ago, recently confirmed by Tristan Casabianca via his spectacular unearthing of heaps of raw material held by the British Museum. It concerns the Arizona dating only, and may indicate that the four dates, attributed to four samples by the paper describing the radiocarbon dating in Nature, are in fact combinations of two random dates from eight measurements of different pieces of the cloth. If this is true, then the Arizona date cannot be subdivided, as it is in the Nature paper and as it was in Riani and Atkinson’s statistical analysis. It detracts not a whit from the general accuracy of the medieval date.
The latest article to come out (27 May) is https://www.viverefermo.it/2019/05/28/la-sindone-non-medievale-il-radiocarbonio-ha-sbagliato/731996. Google translates the end of the article as: “We consider the possibility of a new radio-dating measure with current technology; but in the case where various parts of the Precious Linen provide different ages due to the variables constituted by the contaminants that the cleaning of the samples cannot lift, it should be noted that, to date, it is impossible to obtain a reliable dating of the Shroud.”
Dan,
This year, or next year?
Rich
The dating issue is a trap. But it would be a shame if the image was not properly analysed with a new round of non invasive techniques.
The least one can say is that Torrisi is overacting.
The least one can say is that 1988 radiocarbon dating can no longer be used by skeptics to deny the authenticity of the Shroud.
Over the years there has been a gathering of data that allow us to conclude that radiocarbon dating of the Shroud is invalid, nevertheless a new radiocarbon dating can also repeat the fiasco unless a broad experts comiitee defines a rational strategy that has to consider Image formation and a torough textile analysis.
This was exactly what was stated by several experts back in 2012 in Valencia Shroud Congress.
Even radiocarbon dating of charred material removed from the Shroud in the 2002 disastrous restoration has its own risks of repeating the fiasco.
Well just my thoughts to share with you.
regards
Antero de Frias Moreira
(Centro Português de Sindonologia)
Correction I mistyped thorough
Hugh has replied several times in this forum about the validity of 1988 dating (see above). Gian Marco Rinaldi has an extensive article (“La statistica della datazione della Sindone”, 2012) which is still valid in its conclusions: the dissonances in the results were common in the dates of the time and, although the reliability estimated by the three laboratories was too optimistic, its revision does not invalidate the medieval origin of the canvas. If you read Italian, you will find the article useful. By the way, it is quoted in the bibliography of the article we are commenting on now, but not analyzed inside. I don’t know why.
Oh dear, it would seem the lights are going out all over Sindonology (this site included by the looks of it – with no new posting in the last month).
Some cynics might say that Sindonology has progressively painted itself over the years and decades into the proverbial corner, unable now to reach the light switch as night falls…
I guess it’s what happens when tunnel vision promotion of preconceptions takes the place of those otherwise annoying entities known as hard facts.
Thought I’d sneak in this comment, given that Dan has been closing comments on postings more than a month old. Do I hear the fading out strains of the Last Post? Going, going …
(Postings and Comments have been closed on my site too).