Shroud of Turin redivivus - Not following where the evidence leads

[Faizal_Ali]

@colewd

Neutral on the outcome means we are open to new information that may change our current position.

Yes. Your point being…?

@colewd

What I am advocating is to reduce the political nature of the argument and simply explore the evidence.

That would be a great idea. You and Gil can let us know when you are ready to do that.

@colewd

Calling people liars and incompetent simply because they do not agree with you is not productive.

But doing so because they are competent and are liars is.

@colewd

Dismissing evidence out of hand is not productive.

So stop doing that.

[Gisteron]

@colewd

Dismissing evidence out of hand is not productive.

That’s quaint, considering…

You know, this demonstrably accurate dating method that I cannot name a reason to doubt in this instance completely precluding my thesis is actually quite a good point. However, let’s stay neutral on the issue just for the sake of the sport. Else we’d just arrive at the truth, and that’s boring. No, let’s instead forget set aside this complete smackdown, and consider other points for the time being. After all, it wouldn’t be productive to dismiss evidence, right? Let’s only dismiss it when it settles the argument. In the name of productivity, don’t you see…

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Faizal_Ali

That would be a great idea. You and Gil can let us know when you are ready to do that.

We are trying. It takes work on both sides.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@colewd

What I am advocating is to reduce the political nature of the argument and simply explore the evidence.

As @Faizal_Ali points out, yes, that’s a good idea. You should do that. You and Gil are the only people who appear to be motivated by any concern other than the merits.

@colewd

Calling people liars and incompetent simply because they do not agree with you is not productive.

Probably. But nobody is doing that here. The dishonesty and incompetency shown here are objective and clear and have nothing to do with agreement or the lack thereof.

@colewd

Dismissing evidence out of hand is not productive.

You are doing that, but nobody else is. People are dismissing these alternative dating methods because they aren’t validated, present multiple insurmountable problems, and disagree with the gold standard for dating organic objects in this age range. When a wild new notion, completely unvalidated, produces results that disagree with a method which is so comprehensively well established as carbon-14 dating, there’s no real option but to discard it in favor of the well established method.

And, of course, there’s no corroboration at all for these novel and untested methods; we have no actual evidence by way of provenance or anything else for the “shroud” being 2,000 years old, but we have strong, uncontested historical evidence for its being the age the carbon dating shows.

You see, the fact that purported “evidence” is dismissed easily doesn’t mean it’s being dismissed arbitrarily. You have no valid reasons whatsoever to question the carbon dating – none. The historical evidence backs it up, and you have no alternative dating method that isn’t the wild fantasy of a crank. Such alternatives are not entitled to slight weight merely because someone advocates for them; they are entitled to no weight because of their lack of merit. There’s literally no case – NONE – for accepting these methods, in any context, for anything at all. But to accept them in the face of the agreement of the historical and carbon dating evidence would be frankly insane.

By all means, produce evidence. Nobody is dismissing anything “out of hand.” But the mere fact that some crank is willing to make an insane argument is not evidence; the crank’s methods have to be validated. And when this artifact has been the subject of intense crankery for decades, it’s hardly surprising that when you produce what is plainly more of the same, it doesn’t get taken very seriously. Everyone is open-minded here except for you. So show us something which is of a character to change minds, not the kind of rubbish which you’ve been showing; or, admit you can’t and just walk away.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

As @Faizal_Ali points out, yes, that’s a good idea. You should do that. You and Gil are the only people who appear to be motivated by any concern other than the merits.

If there is a chance here you need to have some empathy for those who disagree with you.

@Puck_Mendelssohn

Probably. But nobody is doing that here. The dishonesty and incompetency shown here are objective and clear and have nothing to do with agreement or the lack thereof.

Are you really looking at the posts? This has been the skeptics mode of argument.

@Puck_Mendelssohn

You are doing that, but nobody else is.

Both Gil and I agree the carbon test is the higher standard. That does not mean the tests with the lesser standard should be ignored.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@colewd

If there is a chance here you need to have some empathy for those who disagree with you.

My pity runs very, very deep.

@colewd

Are you really looking at the posts? This has been the skeptics mode of argument.

(1) Yes. (2) No, obviously it hasn’t, and I find it difficult to believe that you think it has.

@colewd

Both Gil and I agree the carbon test is the higher standard. That does not mean the tests with the lesser standard should be ignored.

It actually does, when the “lesser standard” is, as in these cases, utterly valueless and no genuine reason exists to doubt the historically-corroborated carbon date.

We are, again, dealing with an artifact known for many centuries to be a fraud. You can say up is down, but what you can’t really do is say up is down and then expect that to be treated as though that assertion carries a non-zero weight. And your god must be Loki the trickster, if he is so devious as to alter the shroud precisely to the date range required to corroborate the historical account of its fraudulent origin.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

It actually does, when the “lesser standard” is, as in these cases, utterly valueless and no genuine reason exists to doubt the historically-corroborated carbon date.

Hi Puck
If you think the carbon test answers the question to the authenticity that is fine. Your position is duly noted.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

I think it’s incorrect to suppose that, prior to the carbon dating, there was a “question” as to the authenticity. There’s no provenance, no evidence of authenticity, nothing. To suggest that the carbon date answers a “question” presupposes that some legitimate question existed.

[Tim]

I have to ask @Giltil and @colewd, beyond the fact that they give authenticists the answer they want, what are the advantages of these “other tests”, that they should be considered?

• Unlike Carbon-dating they have not been validated.

• They rely on processes that are less stable than nuclear decay – so they are inherently less accurate.

• They were performed under conditions both less tightly-controlled and tightly-documented than the shroud carbon-dating.

• They were performed on samples of lesser provanance than the carbon-dating samples.

Under these circumstances, it seems perfectly reasonable to “follow the evidence” and conclude that where these “other tests” disagree with carbon-dating, then they are simply wrong.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@colewd

Why did these other methods come up with such different results on other areas of the Shroud?

Did they? AFAICT the other 'method’s don’t actually provide dates, only comparisons with other samples which have been dated independently.

But feel free to complete the table below.

Method	Minimum date	Maximum date	Confidence
Carbon dating (Tucson)	1280	1404	95%
Carbon dating (Oxford)	1178	1298	95%
Carbon dating (Zurich)	1264	1360	95%
WAXS	55	605	???
Vanillin	???	???	???
???	???	???	???

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

You see, the fact that purported “evidence” is dismissed easily doesn’t mean it’s being dismissed arbitrarily. You have no valid reasons whatsoever to question the carbon dating – none. The historical evidence backs it up, and you have no alternative dating method that isn’t the wild fantasy of a crank. Such alternatives are not entitled to slight weight merely because someone advocates for them; they are entitled to no weight because of their lack of merit. There’s literally no case – NONE – for accepting these methods, in any context, for anything at all. But to accept them in the face of the agreement of the historical and carbon dating evidence would be frankly insane.

I’ll point out again that even if we do ignore the carbon-dating result and adopt the alternative unproven low-merit WAXS dating method instead, then we should still reject the shroud as authentic because the WAXS method gave the shroud an earliest date of 55AD, which the author concealed as a vague date of “2000 years” without giving any reason for doing so.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Roy

Did they? AFAICT the other 'method’s don’t actually provide dates, only comparisons with other samples which have been dated independently.

But feel free to complete the table below.

There was also this one, where the eclectically incompetent Giulio Fanti claimed he could test the age of fabrics by seeing how many times he could bend its fibres before they broke. as well as thru “opto-chemical” testing. His results:

A least squares multi linear regression (MLR) has been applied to the measured mechanical data estimating a TS age equal to 260 AD. Furthermore, two opto-chemical methods have been applied to test the linen fabric, obtaining a date of 250 BC by a FT-IR ATR analysis and a date of 30 AD by a Raman analysis. These two dates combined with the mechanical result, weighted through their estimated square uncertainty inverses, give a final date of the Turin Shroud of 90
AD ±200 years at 95% confidence level.

Mechanical ond opto-chemical dating of the Turin Shroud | MATEC Web of Conferences

[Tim]

The actual dates they get for the four methods are respectively, 250BC ± 200 years, 30AD ± 250 years, 140BC ± 156 years, and 260AD ± 137 years. I would note that only one of these CIs overlaps 30AD. Three of the CIs do overlap, but only over the period 50BC-16AD.

I’m fairly sure how they got from this to 90AD ± 200 years has nothing to do with anything in any Statistics textbook.

[Faizal_Ali]

I know I’ve posted this article several times already, but the discussion of how Fanti derived his calibration curve makes for entertaining reading.

WAXSing and waning – The Medieval Shroud

[Tim]

Thanks for that.

… in particular due to the selection of materials and the statistical manipulation that was necessary for the ‘correct’ conclusion to be drawn.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Tim

The actual dates they get for the four methods are respectively, 250BC ± 200 years, 30AD ± 250 years, 140BC ± 156 years, and 260AD ± 137 years. I would note that only one of these CIs overlaps 30AD. Three of the CIs do overlap, but only over the period 50BC-16AD.

I’m fairly sure how they got from this to 90AD ± 200 years has nothing to do with anything in any Statistics textbook.

Two 95% confidence intervals that don’t overlap gives a 90% confidence that at least one is bogus.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Art

I must re-state - older samples will produce vanillin, continuously and until lignin is no longer present. Only young samples will not have vanillin. Thus, Shroud enthusiasts who point to low vanillin levels as as an indicator that some parts of the Shroud are older than others are wrong, and in fact are getting their arguments backwards

There is very likely something wrong in your reasoning for Rogers detected no vanillin in very old samples from the dead see scrolls whereas the holland cloth (produced in Europe between 1532 and 1534) and other medieval linens gave the test for vanillin. So no, « Shroud enthusiasts » aren’t getting their arguments backwards.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Tim

I have to ask @Giltil and @colewd, beyond the fact that they give authenticists the answer they want, what are the advantages of these “other tests”, that they should be considered?

Hi Tim
The main advantages are the tests are non destructive ie the sample can be re tested and several points on the shroud can be tested. If the Carbon 14 test was non destructive we might not be debating this. Getting data from several points on the shrouds and repeating tests is informative.

[Faizal_Ali]

@colewd

The main advantages are the tests are non destructive ie the sample can be re tested and several points on the shroud can be tested.

Which would be an important advantage if the tests provided any useful information whatsoever. Therefore, the fact that literally no one other than Shroudie Crackpots have used these tests is only further evidence that they are useless.

@colewd

If the Carbon 14 test was non destructive we might not be debating this.

I doubt it. The Vatican could keep snipping pieces off the Shroud and C-14 testing them until there wasn’t enough left to cover Jesus’s foreskin. The Shroudies would still insist the testing was flawed for some imaginary reason or another.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

I think it’s incorrect to suppose that, prior to the carbon dating, there was a “question” as to the authenticity. There’s no provenance, no evidence of authenticity, nothing. To suggest that the carbon date answers a “question” presupposes that some legitimate question existed.

Hi Puck
The conclusion from the evidence collect by the STURP team was that the shroud was not a painting. In addition the image contained things like blood marks of the head and marks on the body that were consistent with the Gospel accounts. The carbon 14 test came after this investigation.