No, I’m talking about research done by scientists working in their fields of expertise doing actual research. That is not made up. These are actual peer-reviewed research instead of some guy writing an article in a skeptics or popular press magazine from his asserted “scientific expertise” because he has a degree in science, such as geology, making ex cathedra assertions. Another popular source for such claims is one of a couple of failed stage magicians with degrees in non-technical fields such as English Literature. So, when I speak of “actual researched science” I am referring to reproducible, falsifiable results that have been peer-reviewed, published which was done by scientists working in their fields of expertise, reporting on their research or experiments pursuing hypothesis or investigations, based on the historic structure of previously done research and experimentation.
Such scientific work does not just repeatedly ignore that which has already been proved to have been falsified by previous such qualified research, which the skeptics often do, which is why I used the term “myth-conceptions”.
For example, I have lost count of the number of times the skeptics trot out microscopist Walter C, McCrone’s long debunked claims of finding pigments on the image areas of the Shroud, or his claims that the blood on the Shroud were merely Tempera Paint mixed with Vermillion because he saw such obvious pigments in his visible light microscope. He repeatedly claimed this despite his results being falsified by every other microscopic examination of the Shroud, including Electronmicroscopic examination AND Electronmicroscectrograph showing there simply are no pigments associated with either image or blood areas. (That latter spectrographic test is so sensitive it can detect the fact the thread samples were placed in a vinyl baggie and in fact, the particular manufacturer of the baggie.) McCrone even got so unhinged he was claiming he could tell the DILUTION of the pigments by his visual examination, and, at one point, he claimed the Iron Oxide pigments were of a grind type he had observed on the Shroud had been invented in the 1830s, an obvious impossibility, merely by his microscopist’s expert eye!
Yet the skeptical anti-Shroud “scientists” will, to this day, trot out the late Dr. McCrone as a pillar of their cited proofs despite his claims repeatedly being resoundedly proved false. Yet they LIKE his claims, but they never, ever report they’ve been falsified. That’s not objective science, that’s “true believer” irrationality.
When confronted, they accuse those who falsified McCrone, or even point out that falsification, of supporting lying pseudo-scientists, “true-believing Catholics” who are only propping up an icon,” when in fact, many of the scientists who investigate the Shroud, are, as I mentioned, real scientists working within their fields of expertise, PhDs, writing peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, and many are Jewish, Agnostics, a few atheists, Protestant, etc. They cover the gamut.
Almost every day I search for new apperances of “Turin Shroud” on the internet, so I’m astonished that this site has clocked up 150 replies since beinmg posted.
I am one of those ‘skeptical anti-Shroud “scientists” ‘ Swordmaker mentions (145), but not a ‘failed stage magician’ nor the holder of a degree in ‘non-technical fields such as English Literature’. However I am a leading researcher in the subject, and find Swordmaker’s comments both the most detailed and the most authoritative (so much so that I wonder if we haven’t met before on the internet) , so I thought I’d reply to him, although obviously my observations apply to lots of other responders too.
Like Swordmaker, I like to study ‘research done by scientists working in their fields of expertise doing actual research’, publishing in ‘peer-reviewed’ journals. But I find it a little curious that this opening gambit is followed by a denigration of by far the most qualified and experienced scientist of the whole STuRP team, namely Walter McCrone. He was a by-word in microscopy then, and acknowledged as such today, as witnessed by his continuing achievements, The Microscope, The Particle Atlas, and the McCrone Research Institute. Ray Rogers, who carried out the tape sampling exercise, had taken a course tutored by McCrone, so it was no wonder he first entrusted his tapes to him.
So what of Swordmaker’s claim that his work has been “long debunked”. I don’t think that’s the right approach, and suggests an authenticist bias that I hope is not mirrored by a similar non-authenticist bias on my part.
In his peer-reviewed paper (Acc. Chem. Res. Vol. 23), McCrone publishes several micrographs liberally sprinkled with red dots. It is useless to pretend that they are not there, or that they represent ‘cellulosic bound’ iron oxide associated with the retting process. So why are they ignored by John Heller and Alan Adler (Can. Soc. Forens. Sci. J., Vol. 14)? Rather than dismiss one or the other as an idiot, it is better to try to find an answer.
This may lie in Heller’s book ‘Report on the Shroud of Turin’ where he explains that in order to carry out their chemical tests, he and Adler had to extract each fibre carefully from the sticky tape, and to wash away the ‘stickum’ (Heller’s word) with copious toluene. No wonder they did not discover much particulate matter not firmly adhering.
Roger Morris, STuRP’s X-Ray fluorescence tester, identified varying concentrations of iron across the Shroud, including a remarkable correlation between concentration and image intensity across the face; and both Gérard Lucotte and Giulio Fanti have independently identified cinnabar on two different blood stains. All three are convinced authenticists who do not think the Shroud was painted, but their evidence is certainly not so dismissive of the possibility as Swordmaker seems to imply.
Moving back a bit to Swordmaker’s comment 130. Othonia does not mean burial cloths. Sail is not the root of Sindon (where on earth did you find that?).
Comment 129. There is no archaeological evidence that the ‘dumb bell’ marks on the Shroud match any kind of Roman flagrum, and some sculptural and literary evidence that they don’t. The copies made and illustrated, including yours, are based solely on the Shroud itself, so it is hardly surprising they match so well.
Comment 125. It is not obvious to a number of convinced authenticists, such as John Jackson, the founder of STuRP, and Bob Rucker, that there is any anomalous material in the radiocarbon corner. For a start, every single thread can be followed from the main body of the Shroud into the corner (particularly on the X-Ray photos and Barrie Schwortz’s transmitted light photos), and for a second, there must be at least three times as much interpolation as orignal cloth (that’s 75% / 25%, not 60% / 40%). ‘Approximately equal weights of 16th and 1st century Carbon’ could not have produced the 13th / 14th century date. Various ways of ‘invisible mending’ have been suggested and refuted, and the current front runner is that the invisible mending cannot be detected on the Shroud becasue it is invisible. I have to say I find that not credible.
I have no idea what you mean by beta particles being emitted from the carbon monoxide and dioxide while the samples were being tested. The AMS system measures whole atoms, not beta decay. Perhaps you mean something else.
Comment 121. Damaging the median nerve has various effects depending where it is damaged. None of them result exclusively in the retraction of the thumb. Noted pathologist Freg Zugibe declared that the nail hole wasn’t where Pierre Barbet said it was (he was quite rude about him actually) and that the median nerve had nothing to do with the non-appearance of thumbs on the Shroud.
Comment 109. I’m a skeptic and I don’t claim that. The easiest way to produce the image on the Shroud is to drape it over a damp bas-relief. The areas of greatest pressure result in the areas of densest image. Pseudo-negativity is an inevitable comsequence.
Apart from that, I agree with a lot of what you say!
(PS. Just noticed even more comments. Maybe I’ll post again!)