Except that this “data” is inferior to the point that many on this forum would dispute that it counts as data at all.
(Parenthetically, I would call it ‘data not evidence’. It is data to the extent that it is reported results of experiments – it is not evidence as it has not been demonstrated that these experiments yield reliable results, and therefore is not relevant to determining the shroud’s age. It is therefore “data” only to the same extent as me rolling dice several times and recording the results is data.)
As I said before:
Therefore the reasonable conclusion remains that Carbon dating is right and WAXS, Vanillin, et cetera ad nauseam are all wrong.
This would appear to have a number of issues:
Egocentric bias – people have a natural bias to over-value their own ideas and projects. This is why third party validation is the gold-standard.
Motivated reasoning – all those involved would appear to be ‘Authenticists’ – and therefore have a strong bias towards dating methods that yield a result that indicates that the shround could be authentic.
Add to this that the publisher, MDPI, has a reputation for weak editorial standards – “… critics suggesting it sacrifices editorial and academic rigor in favor of operational speed and business interests.” This means that it is likely to be inadequate in correcting the authors’ bias.
This means that such publications do not constitute evidence of the method’s reliability.
Hi Ron
The method is based on the breakdown of polymerisation of linen fibers being predictable over time. This is this the initial paper of one of the methods used to test the age on linen. The graphs in figure 3 show how linen of different known ages (modern to 3250 Bc) show a distinct profile.
And, of course, you being the shameless liar that you are, will simply pretend you have never seen the following discussion of why that paper is, in the words of the author, “clearly nonsensical.”
… we find no evidence to contradict the idea that the sample studied was taken from the main part of the shroud, as reported by Damon et al. (1989). We also find no evidence for either coatings or dyes, and only minor contaminants.[1]
And, as I have noted repeatedly above, the carbon-testing was performed under far more rigorous and carefully documented procedures than any of the authenticist ‘tests’ were.
… often ignoring or sidestepping any evidence the target has already presented …
Hi Roy
All test methods have errors. The waxes primary uncertainty comes from temperature variation. The carbon primary uncertainty comes from contamination to the sample. A 65 year error is trivial.
The waxes test shows almost certainly there is a contamination problem with the carbon sample.
If you read carefully the paper that Faizal posted Hugh makes an issue that there is uncertainty in the chain of custody prior to its documented origin in France. He is assuming an ancient age in his analysis. If the shroud originated in the Middle Ages as the carbon sample is indicating the polymer breakdown would be much less than the other medieval linens from the Middle East due to the lower temperatures in both France and Italy.
Thanks Roy for making your argument pertaining to the waxes method.
For those who cannot possibly get enough of the “shroud”, the following 9 hour (!) video was live-streamed a few days ago. It seems quite comprehensive. For our purposes, the WAXS article, and some of its many problems, are discussed at 6hr 46min:
The final half hour of the video provides a useful summary of the various possible explanations of features of the "shroud.
When you say that we have an artifact known at the time of its production to be a fraud, I guess you are referring to the work of Ulysse Chevalier, right? Well, let’s see.
Ulysse Chevalier, a French medieval scholar, is credited with the discovery in French archives, at the end of the 19th century, of a copy of the letter-memorandum from Pierre II d’Arcis, bishop of Troyes, addressed to antipope Clement VII, as well as the papal bulls settling the conflict. He concluded that the shroud was nothing more than a medieval work whose maker, a painter identified during Henri II de Poitiers’ first investigation in 1355, had confessed.
From there, you think the matter is settled, don’t you? But you’re going too fast, much too fast, as shown by Emmanuel Poulle, a french historian and archivist, member of the Institute and director of the Ecole des Chartres.
Indeed, in 2006, Poulle re-examined the case file and demonstrated, with minutes and deeds to back it up, that Ulysse Chevalier was not being entirely intellectually honest, since he had deliberately disregarded the definitive texts of the bulls of antipope Clement VII, which renounced any mention of an identified forger, despite the pressing request of the Bishop of Troyes, eager to get rid of these disturbing and lucrative pilgrimages to a tiny village in his diocese, to the detriment of his cathedral’s funding.
To sump up, your absolute confidence that the shroud was known at the time of its production to be a fraud is not warranted.
Absolutely. If we were to have Bill lick various parts of the “shroud” and tell us how old he thinks it tastes, that would likely be non-destructive (depending on how careful Bill is about oral hygiene), but it would not necessarily give us data any more useful than Fanti’s WAXS method.
I watched one hour of it when it was streamed, somewhere around the middle. Then forgot what I watched. I just don’t have enough of a hardon for the shroud, pro or con, to waste any more time on it. But in fairness to myself I think that’s how most shroud “research” is done by shroud apologists anyway.
The hypocrisy here is that almost everyone who believes in the “shroud” also believe Jesus rose from the dead, just because people from around the time wrote that it happened.
Are you saying we at last agree about the time of the shroud’s production? Because frankly, I’ll give you how ever much debate about its authenticity you say there was between then and now. If we can agree the shroud is as young as the thirteenth or fourteenth century, that’s quite enough to settle ours here.
It also seems that misrepresenting the strength of the silly evidence cited to support the authenticity of this graven image is being done to compensate for the lack of evidence supporting the Resurrection.
@Giltil, remember, the vanillin has to come from somewhere. Even the group who wants to use vanillin to date the Shroud states (I gave a quote earlier in this thread) that vanillin is derived from lignin. If samples supposedly very old do not have vanillin, there are only a few explanations, and none of them are kind to the proposition that vanillin levels reflect the age of materials:
If an old sample has no vanillin, then perhaps it has no lignin. This means it is not appropriate to use such samples to infer the ages of other materials.
If an old sample has no vanillin, then perhaps it never had any. Perhaps something in the production of the material interferes with the chemistry of vanillin generation from lignin. Such materials cannot be used to infer the ages of other materials.
Perhaps the “old” material (such as those associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls) is not really old. What is their history? How many times have they been repaired, replaced, and otherwise tampered with? No matter the explanation, such materials cannot be used to infer the ages of other materials.
No matter the explanation, the common theme here is that the vanillin test is not a valid estimator of the age of materials.
I had forgotten about this thread. Rediscovering at nearly 900 comments is like coming home from a long trip and discovering that life has evolved from the dish of leftovers I forgot to throw out from the frig before I left.
Yes, but the shroud, the holland cloth and the medieval pieces of linen examined by Rogers have lignin.
The initial reservoir of vanillin on a linen cloth comes from natural chemical processes occurring during the retting and drying of flax fibers. The lignin doesn’t continuously produce vanillin after this point—it’s a “one-time supply.”
So, there is absolutely no reason to believe that no vanillin reservoir was present on the shroud when it had just been manufactured.
Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated by different methodologies: they are very old, dating from approximately 300 BCE to 70 CE.
I don’t think there is any debate whatsoever on this issue.
So none of your hypothesis works.
Now, here is the rationale with the vanillin test.
just after a piece of linen is manufactured, it has a vanillin reservoir associated with it.
the loss rate of vanillin in a linen cloth far outpaces its production rate from lignin. As mentioned above, the lignin on the cloth doesn’t continuously produce vanillin after the manufacturing process —it’s a “one-time supply.”
Once the initial lignin-derived vanillin depletes, very little new vanillin is produced unless the material is exposed to specific catalytic conditions, making the absence of vanillin a key marker for age.
As explained above, your claim is unwarranted. Moreover, don’t forget that Rogers’ idea regarding the vanillin test has been peer reviewed.
Oh, believe me, I have no intention of watching the whole thing. But it is time stamped, so one can just dip in wherever they want. I did watch the part about the WAXS study because it was pertinent to this discussion. And the first section on the historical documentation of the relic is interesting. There is actually much more of this than I realized (none of it, of course, prior to the 13th century, imagine that.)
