Thursday, July 6, 2017

"Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, June 2017

Shroud of Turin News - June 2017
© Stephen E. Jones
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[Previous: May 2017, part #1] [Next: June 2017, part #2]

This is the "Editorial and Contents," part #1 of the June 2017 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. Following this editorial, I may comment on Shroud-related June 2017 news articles in separate posts, linked back to this post, with the articles' words in bold to distinguish them from mine. I have listed some linked articles about the Shroud in June as a service to readers, without necessarily commenting on them. If I do comment on an article in a separate Shroud of Turin News post, I will add after it "- see Month year, part #n".

Contents:
Editorial
Longenecker, D., 2017, "The Shroud of Turin and the Facts," National Catholic Register, June 23, 2017.
Carlino, E, De Caro, L, Giannini, C, & Fanti, G., 2017, "Atomic resolution studies detect new biologic evidences on the Turin Shroud," PLoS ONE, 12(6), June 30. [see 19Jul17]


Editorial

Rex Morgan's Shroud News: My scanning and word-processing of the 118 issues of Rex Morgan's Shroud News, provided by Ian Wilson, and emailing them to Barrie Schwortz, for him to convert to PDFs and add to his online Shroud News archive, continued in June up to issue #79, October 1993 [Right (enlarge)], i.e 67% completed. Issues in that archive are now up to #76, April 1993.

Tenth anniversary On 30 June 2017 it was this blog's tenth anniversary. On 30 June 2007 I published my first post here, "Introduction to my The Shroud of Turin (TSoT) blog!" [Left: "MN Community Measurement" (no longer online)] My thanks to Jesus, the Man on the Shroud!

Posts: In June I blogged 4 new posts (latest uppermost): "Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date is against the preponderance of the evidence (1): Steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud hacker theory #8" - 21st; "6 May 1987: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud" - 19th; "Real human blood #23: The man on the Shroud: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!" - 3rd; "Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, May 2017 - 2nd. I am going to post several each month of the "On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud" series until I catch up with the actual 30th anniversary of each post.

Updates in the background. In my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index," I originally wrote, "To save space I won't normally have references but rely mostly on links." But in later centuries I started footnoting references. So to be consistent I have started footnoting the 1st century page and will do the same for later centuries until I reach the century where I started footnoting.

Comments: In June I published a comment from a Kyle Wright:

"I recently reading about the Sudarium of Oviedo and noticed that it is almost universally accepted that the radiocarbon dating tests performed on it were inaccurate. I have been able to find very little information on it besides that. Do you have an opinion on the accuracy of this test and do you think its inaccuracy has any bearing on your theories regarding the carbon dating of the Shroud?"
I responded:
"It wasn't that it was `inaccurate' but according to the then Director of the Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory, Paul Damon, "the dating was never carried out." See my post 28Jul12 (words in bold are the Shroud sceptic Charles Freeman's):
Freeman continues to mislead his readers by selectively concealing from them relevant information in his claim that the Sudarium has had "a radiocarbon-14 dating apparently of c. 700 AD":"

Those trying to assess the authenticity of the Sudarium of Oviedo have to contend with a radiocarbon-14 dating apparently of c. 700 AD."

But Freeman's claim is misleading (and what's more, since he surely must have read Guscin's book, he knows it is misleading) that "the Sudarium of Oviedo "had ... a radiocarbon-14 dating ... of c. 700 AD." What Freeman does not tell his readers is that Guscin went into this very thoroughly in his book, detailing his correspondence with the Tucson Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory, and he concluded:

"The only conclusion that can be drawn from this, and the Tucson laboratory would seem to agree, is that the whole affair was something of a shambles. Mr Jull ends his fax to me offering to carry out a serious radiocarbon dating on a sample of interest. The samples were not taken with permission for radiocarbon dating, and had presumably been taken by Monsignor Ricci about 15 years before being sent to Tucson. When sent, insufficient provenance information accompanied them; one of the samples was even stated to be 11th century. Paul Damon says the dating was never carried out, and in the results sent to Italy the sample numbers do not coincide. The laboratory suggests a serious experiment. Taking all this into account, the supposed results of the carbon dating of the sudarium can safely be ignored." ([Guscin, M., 1998, "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK,] pp.83-84).

>Do you have an opinion on the accuracy of this test ...

See above that there was no test, or if there was one, it was so flawed that the Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory has disowned it.

But in general, if a radiocarbon date disagreed with other historical information (e.g. the Sudarium of Oviedo left Jerusalem in AD 614 - see my 24Jan17) then it is the radiocarbon date that is wrong, presumably due to contamination with younger carbon.

>and do you think its inaccuracy has any bearing on your theories regarding the carbon dating of the Shroud?

This is particularly so with the Shroud. The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic and the laboratories and Nature should have taken that into account. It is a form of scientific fraud to state the result of a scientific test without acknowledging the evidence against your result.

The standard of scientific honesty that all scientists, including those involved in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud, should adhere to is that set by the late Professor of Physics at Caltech, Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988) (my emphasis):

"It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty - a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid-not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, And how they worked-to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can-if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong-to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it ... the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another ... I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist." (Feynman, R.P., 1985, "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!," Unwin Paperbacks: London, Reprinted, 1990, pp.340-343)

My radiocarbon dating hacker theory: As can be seen above, in June I blogged only one post about my hacker theory: "Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date is against the preponderance of the evidence (1): Steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud hacker theory #8."

My book: As previously mentioned (see 09May17) I have decided to first write a dot-point outline of my book, The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!. I am writing this outline mostly `off the top of my head' on my smartphone in Gmail and then emailing it to my computer. This may seem strange but I spend a lot of time away from home taking my wife, who has MS, to doctor and physiotherapy appointments, etc, so in this way I am "making the best use of the time" (Eph 5:1). I have made good progress since 9 June when I started the outline. I have resolved to only start writing the book proper (which at this stage will be a free PDF first edition), when I have fully completed this outline and can think of no other topic to be in this first edition of the book.

Pageviews: At midnight on 30 June, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)]gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 764,259. This compares with 544,771 (up 219,488 or 40.3%) from the same time in June 2016. It also gave the most viewed posts for the month (highest uppermost) as: "`Radiocarbon Dating ... error potential when an item is contaminated with newer material'," Apr 19, 2017 - 209; "X-rays #22: The man on the Shroud: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!," Apr 20, 2017 - 142; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Ninth century" Mar 25, 2017 - 141; "Dr Jull's and Prof. Ramsey's prompt, misleading and false replies: Steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud hacker theory #7" - May 10, 2017 - 115; "The Shroud of Turin: 3.6. The man on the Shroud and Jesus were crucified.," Dec 2, 2013 - 113. As can be seen from the graph, pageviews peaked in the middle of the month and then settled down again.


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]

Posted: 6 July 2017. Updated: 13 July 2022.

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