The Russian "scientist" who called the 1988 testing flawed just got ruthlessly exposed as a fraud in the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer. The Russian's theory of "bio-plastic contamination" is not the reason for the failure of the C14 tests... the non-proocol contaminated sample taken from the Shroud was the cause.
Microphotgraphs of the now destroyed (in testing) sample show that there is a diagonal demarcation running lengthwise through the sample which marks an intersection of OLD, original shroud material, with NEW 17th century material that was woven into the shroud to patch the corner using a French Technique called (in English) "invisible reweaving."
Proof of the Re-weaving
The original Shroud threads are spun in a 'Z' twist, consistent throughout the shroud. The added 16th century linen is spun in an "S" twist.
The material on the "patch" side incoorporates both wool and cotton fibers spun into the threads, no wool or cotton are seen in any threads on the "shroud" side. It was considered unkosher to spin or weave linen on a loom that was used with wool... and cotton was not used at all in the Jerusalem area.
The two sides of the sample show that a different "retting" process was used on each... the patch side flouresces, the shroud side does not.
The threads of the patch average smaller than the threads of the Shroud.
All of this is proof that the C14 sample was NOT pristine and not 100% original shroud material.
What can we learn from the flawed Carbon 14 tests?
The C14 tests were actually quite accurate but they tested a mixture of much older linen combined with newer linen. The diagonal division of patch to Shroud provides even more evidence.
The C14 tests were performed on FOUR pieces cut from the single sample, by THREE labs. Each of the labs came up with different creation dates ranging from as old as 1260AD to 1390AD with a degree of confidence of +/-50 years. The results from the four samples were averaged to give a date 1325AD +/-50 years.
Normally, experimental error in C14 tests of something 675 years old would result in a reported degree of confidence of +/-25 years (3.7%)... yet these labs decided to announce their findings with a confidence of +/-50 (7.4%)! Why???
They used +/-50 because their test results varied too greatly!
Notice that the oldest and youngest tested samples varied by 130 years. If you add the degrees of confidence to each sample age, the range of variance is 230 years! This should have raised red flags all over the place.
Note that even at their extreme degrees of confidence, the ages (1390-50=1350 and 1260+50=1310!) of these two pieces cut from the SAME SAMPLE do not OVERLAP! More red flags should have been raised. It was as if two different cloths were being tested. Add that the oldest and youngest dated results came from samples sent to the same lab in Arizona (considered the most accurate of the three labs), the only lab that got TWO samples to test.
On examining the photographs of the sample and the cutting procedure, the chain of evidence reports of exactly which lab got which piece, an explanation for the differing results becomes quite apparent.
Remember that the border between "patch" and "shroud" material ran diagonally lengthwise through the original sample. The cuts that created the smaller samples to be sent to the three labs cut transversally across the original sample AND the border, assuring that each small sample had some varying percentage of "patch" incuded with "shroud" material.
The amount of patch varied from approximately 40% to 60% of the total linen to be tested in each sample. The lab that got TWO samples got theirs from each end of the original piece, one with 40% patch and one with 60% patch while the other two got the other samples, one with about 54% patch and the other with about 48% patch.
The sample that had ~60% patch was the sample that dated at 1390AD +/-50 years and the sample that had ~40% patch was the sample that dated at 1260AD +/-50 years! The other lab's results were also proportional to the percentage of patch in their respective pieces. The variation in reported ages is directly correlated to the percentage of patch material in each sample.
How old does the C14 test actually prove the shroud to be when adjusted for the existance of the "newer" patch material in the observed percentages?
Assuming the patches had been woven into the shroud in 1652 (known as a year when patches were applied to the shroud), how old would the "shroud" material have to be to skew the C14 results from 1652 to 1325 (Avg.) given the estimated percentages of assumed ~350 year old patch material in each piece?
You guessed it... FIRST CENTURY! The degree of confidence is a much larger +/- 150 years because of the imprecise measurements of the percentages of patch.
THIS is the reason the c14 test was and is flawed. This has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Following up on your posting, the following UV photograph by Vern Miller is very revealing:
It was taken with a heavily-filtered ultraviolet lighting (black light) that did not emit any visible light at all. All of the light you see in the photograph was produced by the fluorescence of chemical compounds on the Shroud. Any variations in color and brightness are a direct result of the chemical composition.
The dark brown region across the bottom of the picture is the mended area. The place from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is in the dark brown area just above the tiny triangular white spot located on the bottom edge. (The tiny white triangle is where a small sample was trimmed from the Shroud in 1973 by Gilbert Raes).
The chemical differences are significant. This table summarizes the differences:
| Chemical Differences |
Carbon 14 Sample Area |
Main Part of the Shroud of Turin |
| aluminum as hydrated oxide, common in textile dyeing |
Significant (10 to 20 times as much as found on main part of Shroud) |
Virtually none |
Madder-root dye (alizarin and
purpurin) |
Found |
Not found |
| a gum medium (probably Gum Arabic) vehicle for dye and mordant |
Found |
Not present |
| Lignin at fiber growth nodes |
Very little |
Significant |
| vanillin in lignin |
Found |
Not found |
ultraviolet
fluorescence |
significant |
less |
| cotton fiber in thread |
Found |
Not found |
| spliced fibers |
Found |
Not found |
Quantitative counts of lignin residues show large differences between the carbon 14 sampling areas and the rest of the Shroud. Where there is lignin in the sample area it tests positive for vanillin. Other medieval cloths, where lignin is found, test positive. The main body of the Shroud, with significant lignin at the fiber growth nodes, does not have vanillin. The Shroud's lignin is very old compared with the radiocarbon sampling area.
Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer constituent of plant material including flax. Found in medieval materials but not in much older cloths, it diminishes and disappears with time. For instance, the wrappings of the Dead Sea scrolls do not test positive for vanillin.
Shroudie