Sunday, February 17, 2019

16 February 1989: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is part #14, "16 February 1989," of my series, "On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud." For more information about this series, see part #1. Installments will be to the whole post and not specifically linked. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.

[Index #1] [Previous: 13Oct88 #13] [Next: Mar89 #15]

16 February 1989 The science journal Nature in an article,

"Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" [Above (original)[2].], reported that:

"... samples from the Shroud of Turin have been dated by accelerator mass spectrometry in laboratories at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich ... The results provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390"[3].
By this time it was old news, because as we saw in part #13, 4 months earlier, on 13 October 1988, Prof. Edward Hall (Oxford), Dr Michael Tite (British Museum) and Dr Robert Hedges (Oxford) had announced at a press conference in the British Museum, London (and it had also been near-simultaneously announced in Turin)[4], that the Shroud had been radiocarbon dated "1260-1390!"[5].

The article is opaquely written Prof. Harry Gove (1922-2009), the unofficial leader of the radiocarbon dating laboratories[6], wrote of this Nature article:

"The article was rather opaquely written-difficult to comprehend in complete detail even by experts in the field ..."[7]!
Since there is no reason to think that the author of the article, Dr Michael Tite[8], was unable to write clearly, presumably the opacity of his article was deliberate - to hide the fatal flaw of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating (see below)!

The fatal flaw: The laboratories' Shroud dates disagreed widely Table 2 of the 1989 Nature article article (below) shows that

[Above (enlarge): Table 2 in the 1989 Nature article [see 18Nov15a] showing the mean uncalibrated (before adjustments for past variations of atmospheric carbon dioxide) radiocarbon dates of sample 1 (the Shroud) and control samples 2-4, by the three laboratories[9]. The dates are "BP" which is 1950 when atmospheric nuclear testing began to change the natural levels of carbon 14 in the atmosphere. So Arizona's uncalibrated mean was 1950-646 = 1304 ±31, Oxford's was 1950-750 = 1200 ±31 and Zurich's was 1950-676 = 1274 ±24]

the radiocarbon dates of the Shroud samples (column 1) varied widely. As can be seen above, Oxford's uncalibrated mean of 750±31 is widely different from Arizona's mean of 646 ±31 and Zurich's mean of 676±24. This table is an example of the article being deliberately "opaquely written" (see above), because, as we shall see, nowhere in the article is there a table which sets out the actual years (uncalibrated and/or calibrated) of the three laboratories' Shroud sample (see mine below). Because as can be seen above, Oxford's uncalibrated mean's midpoint is the year 1200 whereas Arizona's is 1304, more than a century later! And Zurich's uncalibrated mean's midpoint is nearly three-quarters of a century after Oxfords!

That there are wide differences in the Shroud sample dates between the three laboratories is clearer in my spreadsheet table below and bar chart below that, based on the years in column "1" (the Shroud sample) of Table 2 of the 1989 Nature article (see above), showing the age ranges (before 1950) and the years they equate to.

[Above (enlarge): Spreadsheet table, based on column "1" (the Shroud sample) of Table 2 in the Nature article, showing minimum and maximum uncalibrated year ranges of each of the three laboratories' average for Sample 1 (the Shroud). See 18Nov15b.]

As can be seen above in the column "Age (bef. 1950)," Oxford's years range 780-720 doesn't overlap Arizona's 677-615 or Zurich's 700-652, and Arizona's and Zurich's ranges overlap by only 25 years (677-652). And in the column "Years," when subtracted from 1950, Oxford's 780-720 equates to a years range of 1170-1230, which doesn't overlap either Arizona's 1273-1335 or Zurich's 1250-1298. Moreover, Arizona's and Zurich's ranges again overlap by only 25 years (1273-1298).

This is even clearer in my spreadsheet bar chart below. As can be seen

[Above (enlarge): Bar chart, based on the uncalibrated years in my spreadsheet table (above), which in turn is based on the average age ranges for each laboratory's dating of Sample 1 (the Shroud) in Table 2 of the 1989 Nature article. See 18Nov15c]

in the bar chart above, visually (allowing for the limitations of the spreadsheet), Oxford's year range of 1170-1230 does not overlap those of the other two laboratories: Arizona 1273-1335 or Zurich 1250-1298. And visually, Arizona's 1273-1335 and Zurich's 1250-1298 ranges overlap by only 25 years 1273-1298.

Calibrated dates and years also disagreed widely Continuing with his deliberately "opaquely written" (see above) Nature article, Dr Michael Tite, instead of providing a table showing calibrated dates and years, he supplied a calibration curve graph (below)

[Right: Calibrated years of Arizona (red), Zurich (green) and Oxford (orange) laboratories, based on the ages (before 1950) in Table 2. The coloured lines were drawn by me using Windows Paint™ on a photocopy of the calibration curve in Fig. 2 of the 1989 Nature article[10]. See 18Nov15d].]

which is useless unless the reader took the time and effort to laboriously draw intercepts from the y-axis ("Radiocarbon age (yr BP)") down to the x-axis ("Calendar age [sic] (AD)"), which I did (see above), to convert the above uncalibrated years into calibrated calendar years. This makes me doubt that the 1989 Nature article was peer-reviewed, because it is hard to believe that at least one reviewer would not have asked Tite to provide a table of calibrated years below (or in place of) the above graph.

Below is my spreadsheet table based on these calibrated years, derived from Table 2 and the calibration curve of Fig. 2. As can be seen, there

[Above: My spreadsheet table showing calibrated years of the Shroud (sample 1) based on Table 2 and Fig. 2 of the 1989 Nature article. See 18Nov15e]

are still wide variations between the three laboratories' calibrated dating years of the Shroud, with Oxford's years 1264-1275 still not overlapping Arizona's 1285-1314 or Zurich' 1285-1293 and those latter two laboratories overlapping by only 8 years (1285-1293).

See my bar chart below for a clearer view of the still wide differences between the three laboratories' calibrated years of the same 8 cm x 1.2 cm sample cut from the Shroud, divided between the three laboratories, and dated using the same AMS method[11].

[Above: My bar chart of the Shroud samples' calibrated years based on my table above, which is turn is based on Table 2 and Fig. 2 of the 1989 Nature article. See 18Nov15f]

These year tables explain why the article was deliberately "opaquely written" (see above) by Tite! And why no tables were provided showing calibrated or uncalibrated years by each laboratory. If readers were permitted to see the wide disagreement in calendar years between the laboratories, they might realise that the Shroud radiocarbon dating `Emperor' has no clothes!

There is a table, Table 3 (see below), at the end of this "opaquely

[Above (enlarge): Table 3 at the end of the 1989 Nature article [12], which shows only the total unweighted mean, 691 ±31, (see Table 2 above) of Sample 1 (the Shroud), of the three laboratories' combined means. The areas outlined in red are where the Shroud's "1260-1390" radiocarbon date came from. If the "Mean Date (Yr BP)" of "Sample ... 1" (the Shroud) is not "691 ±31" (which it isn't - see future below), then the "1260-1390" date is wrong (which it is), and the 1989 Nature article should never have been published!]

written" article, which does show calibrated years, but not by each laboratory! And as Table 3 above indicates, and the article states under it, it was from this combined unweighted mean of the three laboratories that the "95%" confidence level, "AD 1262 - 1312, 1353 - 1384 cal" was derived, which when rounded down and up to the nearest 10 years, yielded the radiocarbon date of the Shroud, "1260-1390":

"The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 - 1390 (rounded down/up to nearest 10 yr)"[13].
The Shroud radiocarbon dating failed its own Chi-square test! The Chi-square test is "a statistical method assessing the goodness of fit between a set of observed values and those expected theoretically"[14]. In the below extract from Table 2, it can be seen that

the Chi-square value ("Χ2 value (2 d.f.)") of sample 1 (the Shroud) was 6.4. This contrasts markedly with the table's Chi-square values of the control samples 2 (0.1), 3 (1.3) and 4 (2.4). So already there is a serious problem. According to the radiocarbon dating result, the Shroud cloth was just another medieval ("1260-1390") linen sheet. As Oxford's Prof. Edward Hall put it, the Shroud was just another "fourteenth century ... bit of linen":

"There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the fourteenth century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it"[15].
But two of the the three control samples were bits of linen also:
"The three control samples, the approximate ages of which were made known to the laboratories, are listed below. Two were in the form of whole pieces of cloth (samples 2 and 3) and one was in the form of threads (sample 4). Sample 2. Linen (sample QI.T/32) from a tomb excavated at Qasr Ibrîm in Nubia ... On the basis of the Islamic embroidered pattern and Christian ink inscription, this linen could be dated to the eleventh to twelfth centuries AD. Sample 3. Linen ... associated with an early second century AD mummy of Cleopatra [not the Cleopatra] from Thebes (EA6707). This linen was dated ... giving a radiocarbon age of 2,010 ± 80 yr BP (BM-2558). This corresponds to a calendar age, rounded to the nearest 5 years, of 110 cal BC - AD 75 cal ... (where cal denotes calibrated radiocarbon dates). Sample 4. Threads removed from the cope of St Louis d'Anjou ... On the basis of the stylistic details and the historical evidence the cope could be dated at ~ AD 1290 - 1310 ..."[16].
and they had the lowest, 2 (0.1) and 3 (1.3), chi-square values! So why was the Shroud's 6.4 chi-square value 64 times (6.4/0.1 = 64) that of control sample 2 and nearly 5 times (6.4/1.3 = ~4.9) the chi-square value of sample 3?

For a chi-square test with 2 degrees of freedom, "(2 d.f.)," the maximum upper limit of homogeneity, at 95% confidence, is 5.99[17]. The chi-square value of 6.4 of the Shroud samples in Table 2 of the 1989 Nature article means they were not homogeneous[18] (as is evident in my uncalibrated and calibrated bar charts above). It therefore was a lie by Tite (and what's more he knew it was a lie[19]), his claim in the 1989 Nature article that, "The age of the shroud is obtained as AD 1260-1390, with at least 95% confidence"[20]!

Arizona's dates in Nature are fraudulent Remi van Haelst, a Belgian industrial chemist and expert in statistical analysis, discovered that Arizona had provided the British Museum with eight radiocarbon dates of the Shroud, some of which when calibrated and converted to calendar years, were more recent than 1355, when the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France:

"Arizona did not provide FOUR but EIGHT data ... The error-values between brackets are estimated ... Mathematically, the calculations following Wilson-Ward, with EIGHT and FOUR data will give the same result. So why were this data reduced from EIGHT to FOUR???? Because with the quoted errors the Arizona data overspans an era of 540-95 = 445 to 753+93 = 846. About FOUR centuries. Converted into calendar date 1270-1430. And one may not forget that any date below 650 rc conflicts with the historical deadline of 1355, when started the veneration of the Shroud in Lirey. After receiving the Zurich results, with also TWO dates below 650 rc, Dr. Leese wrote a letter to Arizona (dated July 28 1988), asking to REDUCE the EIGHT data to FOUR, by considering the TWO runs made the same day, like ONE run. So the data presented in table 1 are not INDIVIDUAL measurements, but the mean of TWO measurements. Which are in fact the average of between 10-20 measurements. Arizona agreed. because they knew that their mean result 646±31 was in fact conflicting with the historical deadline of 1350" (his emphasis)[21].
Below is my more compact spreadsheet copy of van Haelst's table in his Shroud News article:

[Above (enlarge): Arizona laboratory's original eight dates, uncalibrated, which were fraudulently statistically manipulated by the British Museum's statistician Dr. Morwen Leese (with Tite and Arizona's approval) to become four dates in the 1989 Nature article (see below). Note that the midpoint of 574±45 is 1950-574 = 1376, which 21 years after 1355. So that was combined and averaged with 606±41 to make it 591±30, the midpoint of which is 1950-591 = 1359, still 4 years past 1355. And 540±57, the midpoint of which is 1950-540 = 1410, 55 years after 1355, was combined and averaged with 676±59 to make it also 606±41, the midpoint of which is 1950-606 = 1344, now 11 years before 1355.]

This was scientific fraud, "making results appear just a little crisper or more definitive than they really are":

"The term `scientific fraud' is often assumed to mean the wholesale invention of data. But this is almost certainly the rarest kind of fabrication. Those who falsify scientific data probably start and succeed with the much lesser crime of improving upon existing results. Minor and seemingly trivial instances of data manipulation-such as making results appear just a little crisper or more definitive than they really are, or selecting just the `best' data for publication and ignoring those that don't fit the case-are probably far from unusual in science. But there is only a difference in degree between `cooking' the data and inventing a whole experiment out of thin air"[22].
Moreover, according to Van Haelst, the chi-square value of the Shroud samples is actually 7.13[23], not 6.4, which means that the Shroud samples' dates across the three laboratories were even less homogeneous[24]!

The fatal admission! Hidden in the midst of a block of text in this deliberately "opaquely written" (see above) article is a fatal admission by Tite:

"An initial inspection of Table 2 shows that the agreement among the three laboratories for [control] samples 2, 3 and 4 is exceptionally good. The spread of the measurements for sample 1 [the Shroud] is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted"[25].
But this is inexplicable and indeed impossible if the Shroud dates were real and not computer-generated by a hacker's program [see 13Jun14, 11Feb15, 03Jun15, 18Nov15 and 24Oct16]. Given that: 1) the three laboratories' `postage stamp' size Shroud samples[26] were all sub-divided from the same 81 x 16 mm (~3.2 x 0.6 in.)[27] sample cut from the Shroud[28] (see below); and 2) at each laboratory, Shroud and

[Above (enlarge): Drawing of the approximately 1.6 cm x 8.1 cm (not 1.2 cm x 8 cm) Shroud sample, which was subdivided into sub-samples from right to left: "A" (Arizona), "Z" (Zurich), "O" (Oxford), "A1" (Arizona additional), and "R" (Reserve retained by Turin), with a photograph of the sample superimposed over the bottom right hand side[29]. There can be no significant differences in radiocarbon dates between sub-samples from such a tiny sample - but there was!]

control samples were each converted to pure carbon (graphite) and then compressed into 1 mm diameter carbon pellets inside the holder pits on the same ~26 mm (~1 inch) carousel[30] and irradiated

[Right (enlarge): carousel of the CEDAD (CEntro di DAtazione e Diagnostica) AMS radiocarbon dating facility at the University of Salento, Italy[31]. This carousel has 12 target holders and is of unknown diameter. Zurich's (and presumably Arizona's and Oxford's) carousel had ten holders and its diameter was about 26 mm or 1 inch (see above).]

together at the same time in a beam of caesium atoms[32] for a total of ten minutes[33].

The process was fully "under computer control"[34] so human error cannot have intervened in the process, to cause the Shroud sample dates across the three laboratories to disagree widely (as they did-see above uncalibrated and calibrated bar charts), while the control samples' dates across the three laboratories had "exceptionally good" agreement (see above). The AMS system must be designed so that if there was a problem with the dating process at one of the laboratories, then its Shroud and control sample dates would wrongly agree together, and disagree together with the Shroud and control sample dates of the other two laboratories. Therefore it is inexplicable and impossible that the control samples across the three laboratories had "exceptionally good" agreement, but the Shroud samples across the three laboratories had a "spread of ... measurements" that was "greater than would be expected."

But it is explicable and possible if the Shroud sample dates were not

[Left: Photo of Timothy W. Linick and report that "He died at the age of forty-two on 4 June 1989, in very unclear circumstances"[35]. In fact Linick "shot himself" (or so it was assumed) but left no suicide note [see 22Feb16a]. That was only one day after hacker Karl Koch's burnt body was publicly identified by West German police on 3 June 1989 [see 22Feb16b]. According to my hacker theory, Linick's `suicide,' like Koch's, was murder by the KGB made to look like suicide, to prevent them publicly confessing their part in the Soviet sponsored hacking of the Shroud's 1988 radiocarbon dating, which produced the `too good to be true' 1260-1390 = 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date of the first-century Shroud.]

real but computer-generated by a hacker's (allegedly Timothy W. Linick's) program in this fully computerised process! [22Oct17]

Before the article On 15 October, two days after the 13 October 1988 announcement by Hall, Tite and Hedges that the Shroud had been radiocarbon dated "1260-1390!" (see above), the Rev. David Sox (1936-2016), officially launched his anti-authenticist book, "The Shroud Unmasked"[36]. As Ian Wilson pointed out in his review of

[Right: The date in the Introduction of this book is "August 1988"[37], so the book had already been written by Sox well before the 13 October official announcement of the 1260-1390 dating results[38] See 24Jun14, 05Mar15, 30Dec15, 22Nov16, 15Aug17 & 06Aug18.

Sox's book:

"The book, which was already printed, but not yet released, more than two weeks before the official announcement of the carbon dating results, makes clear that Sox authoritatively knew the carbon dating result well in advance. Inevitably, therefore, someone leaked their result to Sox, and he in turn was responsible directly or indirectly for at least two of the highly publicised leaks from within the U.K., those immediately in the wake of his Timewatch programme, and the Sunday Times premature announcement (headlined an `official' result) of 18 September, which the Sunday Times admitted derived from an advance copy of Sox's book. But if Sox knew from Switzerland, he does not disclose this"[39].
In the wake of that 13 October announcement, Ian Wilson in an October 1988 BSTS Newsletter article, "The Carbon Dating Results: Is This Now the End?" used the inspired analogy of a jumbo jet pilot who doesn't ditch his plane into the sea because one instrument, the fuel gauge, reads empty:
"But if there was one feature of the British Museum press conference that particularly astonished, and frankly annoyed me, it was Professor Hall's flat assertion, on the basis merely of the averaged `1260-1390 AD' dates quoted ... that the carbon dates have overwhelmingly proved the Shroud's fraudulence. Effectively we are supposed to believe that on the basis of one single branch of science, nuclear physics (and all involved with the carbon dating, including Gonella and Tite, were physicists), every other scientific and historical contribution to the subject must now be tossed aside as totally worthless. As Hall admitted, it did not matter to him that there remained no clear explanation for how some hypothetical forger created the Shroud's image. The laboratories' instruments had spoken, and that was it. Now although a mere arts graduate, I have always understood that to be truly scientific, any hypothesis needs to be checked from at least two different directions. For instance we do not expect the captain of an Atlantic-crossing jumbo jet, spotting that his fuel gauges suddenly read empty, immediately to ditch his aircraft in the sea without a few further checks"[40].
Wilson's leadership in this darkest hour of sindonology's greatest crisis, was heroic. He was personally derided as "clutching at straws":
"Yet when on 13 October 1988 the scientists who radiocarbon dated the `Shroud announced their 1260-1390 result, to the world at large it was as all previous research on the subject, however scientific and well founded, had immediately to be swept aside as of no consequence. Within minutes of the announcement BBC TV's science correspondent, James Wilkinson, was asking me how it felt to have the Shroud proved a fake. My all too shaky response was to deny that the matter was proven and to suggest that some undetermined factor might have skewed the result. This provoked `Wilkinson to snort: `But aren't you clutching at straws?'[41].
Anti-authenticist Lynn Picknett recalled the "ridicule" that Wilson and other Shroudies had to endure in that immediate "post-carbon-dating world":
"The post-carbon-dating world of the Shroudies was very different from the one that preceded the devastating announcement of October 13, 1988. For the Shroudies, the worst thing about the carbon dating was the ridicule. Cartoons began to appear, and jokes about it crept into television programs, such as the irreverent satirical show Spitting Image. A full-length transparency of the Shroud would later figure in the British Museum's exhibition Fake: The Art of Deception. When Ian Wilson gave a talk to the Wrekin Trust on November 5, 1988, and was introduced as `being best known for his book The Turin Shroud," the large audience of respectable, intelligent people laughed. He may have smiled back, but one does not have to try too hard to understand his feelings"[42].
On 15 February 1989, the eve of the publication of the 1989 Nature article, Oxford's Prof. Edward Hall (1924–2001), derided pro-authenticism as "Self-Persuasion" and ridiculed anyone who continued to regard the Shroud as authentic as a "Flat Earther" and "onto a loser":
"In a £5-a-ticket talk at the Logan Hall, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London, Professor Hall lectures to the British Museum Society on 'The Turin Shroud: A Lesson in Self-Persuasion'. He very forcefully declares anyone continuing to regard the Shroud as genuine a 'Flat Earther' and 'onto a loser'"[43].
After the article On 19 March 1989 the Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero (r. 1977-89), retired as Archbishop of Turin, and was succeeded by Giovanni Saldarini (r. 1989-99), with Ballestrero temporarily remaining the custodian of the Shroud[44]. That this was not a normal retirement is evident that it was seven months short of the then official retiring age of 75 for bishops, including cardinals. Ballestrero was a progressive who regarded it as unimportant if the Shroud was not authentic, whereas Pope John Paul II (r. 1978-2005) was a conservative who did believe the Shroud was authentic[45]. Ballestrero came under fierce criticism throughout Italy in the wake of his simplistic acceptance of the results of the Shroud carbon dating (see 30Oct18). The Vatican declined to defend Ballestrero from his attackers, leaving the Cardinal feeling "embittered and dismayed"[46], so it seems that Ballestrero either resigned or was pushed!

On 25 March The Times announced that forty-five businessmen and 'rich friends' had donated £1 million to create a chair of archaeological sciences at Oxford to perpetuate the radiocarbon-dating laboratory created by Professor Edward Hall, with the first incumbent to be the British Museum's Dr Michael Tite[47]!

On 1 October 1989, Dr. Michael Tite [Left (original)[48].] succeeded to Hall's professorship at Oxford[49] and also Director of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory[50]. In 1985 when Gove learned that Hall was on the Board of Trustees of the British Museum with Tite being the coordinator of the radiocarbon dating, Gove regarded it a "disturbing" potential conflict of interest[51]. Clearly Hall had a lot riding on the success of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating, and Tite as the author of the 1989 Nature article [see reference 8], with the presumed promise by Hall of his Chair at Oxford and Directorship of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, had a strong incentive to be a party to scientific fraud (see above and to lie that, "The age of the shroud is obtained as AD 1260-1390, with at least 95% confidence" (see above)!

Continued in the next part #15 of this series.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989a, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, pp.611–615, 611. [return]
3. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989b, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, pp.611-615, 611. [return]
4. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, p.8; Garza-Valdes, L.A., 1998, "The DNA of God?," Hodder & Stoughton: London, p.8; Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, p.164; Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.89. [return]
5. Wilson, 1991, pp.8-9; Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, pp.6-7; Wilson, 2010, p.89. [return]
6. Sox, H.D., 1988, "The Shroud Unmasked: Uncovering the Greatest Forgery of All Time," The Lamp Press: Basingstoke UK, p.95; Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, pp.192-193. [return]
7. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, pp.300-301. [return]
8. Dr Michael Tite, in Marinelli, E. & Petrosillo, O., 1989, "The 1988 Shroud Samples: An interview with Dr Michael Tite," Paris Symposium 1989. [return]
9. Damon, 1989b, p.613. [return]
10. Damon, 1989b, p.614. [return]
11. Wilson, 1998, pp.189, 192. [return]
12. Damon, 1989b, p.614. [return]
13. Damon, 1989b, p.614. [return]
14. "chi-square test - Google Search," 25 February 2019. [return]
15. Sheridan, M. & Reeves, P., 1988, "Turin Shroud shown to be a fake," The Independent, 14 October, in Wilson, 1998, p.7. [return]
16. Damon, 1989b, p.612. [return]
17. Van Haelst, R., 1992, "Will the British Museum finally open its Shroud file?," Shroud News, No 73, October, pp.3-6, 5; Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: San Gwann, Malta, p.127. [return]
18. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.127. [return]
19. Van Haelst, R., 1994, "A caveat about the Shroud radiocarbon dating," Shroud News, No 84, August, pp.13-14, 13. [return]
20. Damon, 1989b, p.611. [return]
21. Van Haelst, R., 1991, "Radiocarbon data indeed manipulated," Shroud News, No 68, December, p.5. [return]
22. Broad, W. & Wade, N., 1982, "Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science," Simon and Schuster: New York NY, p.20. [return]
23. Van Haelst, 1991, p.5; Van Haelst, R., 1992, "Were the radiocarbon dates manipulated?," BSTS Newsletter, No. 30, December/January, pp.5-8, 6; Van Haelst, 1994, p.13. [return]
24. Van Haelst, 1991, p.5; Van Haelst, 1992, p.6. [return]
25. Damon, 1989b, p.613. [return]
26. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, p.104; Iannone, 1998, p.163; Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, p.117; Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.94; Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, p.170. [return]
27. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.62; Garza-Valdes, 1998, p.179; Danin, A., Whanger, A.D., Baruch, U. & Whanger, M., 1999, "Flora of the Shroud of Turin," Missouri Botanical Garden Press: St. Louis MO, p.5. [return]
28. Wilson, 1991, p.6; Wilson, 1998, pp.6,191; Wilson, 2010, pp.82A, 87, 93, 95, 146E. [return]
29. Wilson, 1998, p.189. [return]
30. Sox, H.D., 1988, "The Shroud Unmasked: Uncovering the Greatest Forgery of All Time," Lamp Press: Basingstoke UK, pp.142, 145; Damon, et al., 1989, p.613; Wilson, 1991, pp.7-8; McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, p.246; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, p.130. [return]
31. "Accelerator Mass Spectrometry," CEDAD, University of Salento, Italy, 27 June 2006. [return]
32. Sox, 1988, pp.142, 145; Gove, 1996, p.262. [return]
33. Gove, 1996, p.262. [return]
34. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
35. Bonnet-Eymard, B., 2000, "The Holy Shroud is as Old as the Risen Jesus, IV. Caution! Danger!, The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century, No 330, Online edition, May. [return]
36. Wilson, 1998, p.311. [return]
37. Sox, 1988, p.6. [return]
38. Wilson. I., 1988a, "Recent Publications," BSTS Newsletter," No. 20, October, pp.18-19; Crispino, D., 1990, "Recently Published," Shroud Spectrum International, Nos. 35/36, June/September, pp.29-37, 30; Paci, S.M., 1990. "The Case is Not Closed!," Shroud News, No 60, August, pp.4-11, 8; Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, pp.11, 109; Guerrera, 2001, p.134. [return]
39. Wilson, 1988a, p.19. [return]
40. Wilson, I., 1988b, "The Carbon Dating Results: Is This Now the End?," BSTS Newsletter, No. 20, October, pp.2-10, 4. [return]
41. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.95. [return]
42. Picknett, L. & Prince, C., 2006, "The Turin Shroud: How Da Vinci Fooled History," [1994], Touchstone: New York NY, Second edition, Reprinted, 2007, p.10. [return]
43. Wilson, 1998, p.311. [return]
44. Wilson, 1998, p.311. [return]
45. "Anastasio Ballestrero," Wikipedia, 16 January 2019. [return]
46. Wilson, I, 1989a, "News from overseas: Retirement of Cardinal Ballestrero," BSTS Newsletter, No. 21, January/February, pp.10-11. [return]
47. Wilson, I., 1989b, "Dr. Tite to succeed Professor Hall at Oxford," BSTS Newsletter No. 22, May, pp.7-8; Wilson, 1998, p.311. [return]
48. "Michael S. Tite-2008 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology," Archaeological Institute of America, 2008. [return]
49. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.111. [return]
50. "Michael S. Tite," Archaeological Institute of America, 2008. [return]
51. Gove, 1996, p.82. [return]

Posted: 17 February 2019. Updated: 26 March 2021.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

"News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, January 2019

Shroud of Turin News - January 2019
© Stephen E. Jones
[1]

[Previous: December 2018, part #1] [Next: February 2019, part #1]

This is the January 2019 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have listed below linked news articles about the Shroud in January as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them.

News:
• "New discoveries prove man on Shroud of Turin was ‘really crucified’," LifeSiteNews, 11 January 2019, Diane Montagna.
• "Seeking Christ's face: Some believe hilltop shrine holds true relic," Catholic News Service, 18 January 2019, Junno Arocho Esteves. [This is about the Holy Face of Manoppello [Right (enlarge): (extract from article photo)]. See 09Dec17 for Ian Wilson's reasons why this is merely a copy (or even a copy of a copy) of the Vatican's Veil of Veronica (now very deteriorated-see 27Jul17), which itself was merely the Vatican's early 12th century copy of the Shroud face.]

Editorial
Rex Morgan's Shroud News: In Shroud.com's January Update the final 8 issues of Rex Morgan's Shroud News, nos. 111-118 appeared in Barrie Schwortz's Shroud News, archive. On 3 January I mailed back to Ian Wilson his 118 issues of Shroud News and he emailed me on 15 January that he received them. So ended a project that began on 4 April 2015 - 3 years and ~9 months ago! But the sad news is that Rex Morgan, who is
[Left (original): Rex Henry Morgan, JP, Member of the Order of Australia (AM), Member of the British Empire (MBE), etc, etc] in his 80s, emailed me in large capital letters that his eyesight is failing and he is having difficulty reading the online versions of his "life work" as he once told me his Shroud News was (yet see what else Rex Henry Morgan is and has done!). At least Rex knows that his "life work" has been "immortalised" by being digitised and put online.

Posts: In January I blogged 6 new posts (latest uppermost): "Abgar VIII: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" - 31st; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Fifteenth century (2)" - 14th; "Abgar V: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" - 8th; "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, December 2018" - 5th; "Date index 2019: The Shroud of Turin blog" - 4th; "Index A-Z: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" - 3rd.

Updates Updates of past posts in the background included adding to my "Abgar V: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" post after I had posted the final installment, what I had overlooked, the c.945 Official History's account of how the Image of Edessa/Shroud came to be in Edessa.

Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. In January I restarted my "Turin Shroud Encyclopedia." The main reason I did that is because it enables me to post Shroud topics that might never come up otherwise.

Comments: I deleted an anti-authenticist mocking comment in January. If anti-authenticists knew deep down that they had truth on their side, their comments would reflect a polite serenity. But instead their nasty `body language' tells me that deep down they fear they are wrong!

In January I received a follow-up comment under my 21 August 2018 post, "`Poker holes' #29: Other marks and images: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic! from a Dr. Tibor Szarvas, a radiochemist in Budapest. I reply commented to Dr Szarvas that I would respond to his comment in a separate post. But since tomorrow, 16 February 2019, is the 30th anniversary of the Nature paper, "Radio-carbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" [Right], and I will need to post near to that date in my series, "On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud," it will have to wait until after that. But after waiting so long, it will probably be an anticlimax for Dr Szarvas because I will probably repeat much of what I wrote in my earlier comment under that post.

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. I still have had no response to my "Open letter to Professor Christopher Ramsey" of 4 October 2018. I recently found where Ian Wilson wrote that Ramsey was a "professed Christian":

"Professor Edward Hall died in 2001, and his successor Dr Michael Tite has retired from what has been renamed the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, now moved to rather more salubrious premises in Oxford's South Parks Road. The unit's present director, Professor Christopher Bronk Ramsey, a professed Christian, was a young student at the time the Shroud was radiocarbon dated and has none of Hall's Old Etonian braggadocio. Characteristically soft-spoken, he has declared himself very willing to make his laboratory's facilities available for any sensible, properly scientific fresh approach to the subject"[2]
I therefore still hope and pray that Prof. Ramsey will put Jesus (or at least the truth) first and either collectively, or him individually, write to Nature, requesting it retract its 16 February 1989 article, "Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin," on the grounds that the artistic and historical evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud was in Constantinople in the mid-12th century, and therefore it arrived in Constantinople as the Image of Edessa in 944, and therefore was in Edessa from 544 [see 04Oct18].

My radiocarbon dating hacker theory As can be seen above, I blogged no new post on my hacker theory in January.

My book: After a slow start, in January I began making progress word-processing my draft book manuscript, "The Shroud of Turin: The burial sheet of Jesus!"

[Right (enlarge): The planned cover of my book.]

Pageviews: At midnight on 31 January 2019, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 1,011,448. This compares with 842,205 at the same time in January 2018. That is 169243 pageviews over the past 12 months, or an average of ~464 pageviews per day.

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for the month (highest uppermost) as: "Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear," Mar 18, 2011 - 127; "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, December 2018," Jan 5, 2019 - 94; "Abgar V: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia," Jan 8, 2019 - 74; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Fifteenth century (2)," Nov 9, 2018 - 69 and "Index A-Z: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" - Jan 3, 2019 - 66.

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, pp.98. [return]

Posted 14 February 2019. Updated 7 November 2023.