This well written article from 1991 assumes a massive conspiracy. It postulates a plan to substitute "control" samples for "Shroud" samples (Which, incidentally, and unexplained, were done "by someone" at each laboratory. The article presents its theory as if it were proven fact... it is not. It is merely the author's fiction of what he hopes happened.
First of all, the switching of samples could not have taken place. The Shroud pieces were weighed: "...weighing 14.1, 39.6, 52.8 and 52.0 mg" When the samples were removed from the cylinders at each laboratory they were RE-WEIGHED to the even greater accuracy necessary for the accuracy of the AMS C14 tests. Any discrepancy in weights would have been immediately noted. There were none.
Secondly, the decision to change the sample size AND location, as was reported, was made unilateraly by the custodian of the Shroud... and that is what skewed and finally invalidated the results of the C14 test. Instead of taking 8 small samples from 8 different areas of the shroud including both image and non-image areas, the sample was cut from an area already known to STURP to be comprimised and in their C14 protocol declared "off limits" for that reason. Even the new protocol prepared by the new committee did not accept that area. The failing was in not protesting it when it was cut.
And finally, as has been conclusively proven in the last 10 years, the SAMPLE was really the Shroud... but it was a repaired area that had been rewoven in the 16th Century by a technique well known at that time but not before. The reweavers attempted to match the threads of the original shroud in both color and texture and succeeded... to the naked eye. However, they failed to match chemistry, twist, and even content. Photomicrographs of the now destroyed in testing C14 samples clearly show the interwoven new threads with the original threads. It is this admixture of two sets of linen threads, one 16th Century and one apparently 1st Century that was tested to give a date that was gleefully announced as "1260 - 1390."
No conspiracy of anti-Catholics or anti-Christians is necessary to explain the spurious dates. It just merely takes a series of stupid decisions and careless mistakes.
I am convinced the "tests" were a fraud. The Shroud is real.