Carbon Dating & The Shroud of Turin

BlackTyranny writes "The Shroud of Turin, carbon dated in 1978 by a team of scientists, may be far older than originally thought. Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, part of the original team, used samples given to him in 2003 from the Cardinal of Turin's scientific advisor. Roger's contends that the carbon dating might be faulty because "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth." I think the shroud 'Patch' may be made of the big foot suit. ;)

Comments

dating

[dankelley]

Yeah, most of my dating is faulty also. Oh, carbon, you say. Nevermind.

1978?

[Anonymous Coward]

The carbon dating was done in 1988, not in 1978. The article is wrong.

Cautionary note ...

[fygment]

... Raymond N. Rogers has been a long time believer of the authenticity of the shroud. A Google on his name will show a long involvement. It is doubtful he will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs. This does not mean he is wrong nor a fraud. It would just be more believable if the findings were from an unbiased third party.

Religious View vs. Scientific View

[reporter]

For the religiously inclined, click on this link to go to a relatively good (i.e. moderate) viewpoint on the Shroud, by an Epicopalian who thinks like John Shelby Spong (one of the very few Christians whom I respect).

For those (like myself) who are secular, I wish to point out the single greatest problem in the religious view of the Shroud. The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus. This type of reasoning is "Assume the conclusion to be true. Then prove the conclusion." I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."

Actually, that would be a sin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leviticus 19:19

King James Bible: Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed. Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Good News Bible: Obey my orders. Do not crossbreed your cattle. Do not plant two kinds of seed in the same field. Do not wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.

Re:Actually, that would be a sin.

[jayratch]

Not at all. The Hebrew codes specified in Leviticus et al specify a code of life that is extremely survival oriented, efficiency oriented, and family oriented. The end result of this is a nation that managed to thrive and grow to eventually produce movements which now dominate most of the world. Control for its own sake though it is not:
1) The kosher laws effectively prevent food poisoning and obesity. Much of what is forbidden, under available food preparation techniques (which were also specified at a high standard of sanitation), would have been either a bacterial risk or unhealthy in general.
2) Other laws, such as those governing clothing and housewares, prescribe a level of quality control that may have increased initial costs on many items, but probably resulted in better durability and a lower long term TCO.
3) Sex laws served two purposes. They held the family units together and guaranteed growth of the nation (more offspring than parents) as well as preserving the purity of the group. This may not make sense biologically but it avoided the cultural confusion which we Americans are so fond of.
4) The entirety of the code gave the Hebrews a sense of "something different" from their neighbors, as it continues to for those who follow it. Hence serving to unify the people and enhance a sense of nation, which is why they are just about the only cultural group of that period to have survived to the modern day.

Hm...

[HackNack]

Scientific method:

1. Characterization
2. Hypothesis (a theoretical, hypothetical explanation)
3. Prediction (logical deduction from the hypothesis)
4. Experiment (test of all of the above)
5. Conclusion (an objective conclusion based on #4)

Dr. Raymond Rogers's Method

1. Conclusion (It was Jesus's burial shroud)
2. Characterization (What's that?)
3. Hypothesis (Huh?)
4. Prediction (We all know it was Jesus's)
5. Experiment (Hmmm, let's pick a method that will ballpark the age better. 100,000 BC to 2005 CE GOOD! Hey, it's all good.)

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Vellmont]

I'd remind the readers that science is fallible.

Of course. But you sound like you're using the fallibility of science to justify what you already believe. In other words "it MUST be the real Jesus shrowd, not that I have any evidence it is.. but eventually science will show the counter-evidence is wrong because.. well it MUST be". That's not how science works. Sure, it's possible the science is faulty.. but you don't just assume it is because the evidence doesn't back up your own, unsubstatiated beliefs. That's just patently dishonest.

In science you take all the evidence and make a conclusion based on that with the understanding that it's not the final word on the matter. In other words, you don't get to use science only when it backs up what you want to believe, but claim faulty science when it doesn't.

Get it right

[KontinMonet]

First, the British Museum did no dating. They simply coordinated the results from three labs in the US, UK and Switzerland.

Second, this 'bioplastic coating' was simply a hypothesis from Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas. STURPS Joan L. Rogers took authentic Shroud fibers, which she laboriously extracted from the STURP sampling tapes by washing them free of adhesive with xylene (not a solvent for any "bioplastic polymers"), to Metuchen, NJ, for laser-microprobe Raman analysis. The analysis is extremely sensitive, but nothing was observed that would indicate a "bioplastic polymer."

Third, even at the time, scientists in the dating lab in the UK were skeptical: P.H South, while examining threads from the sample on behalf of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory found indications of cotton. To him it seemed like material intrusion. In an article entitled "Rogue Fibers Found in Shroud," published in Textile Horizons in 1988, South write of his discovery of "a fine dark yellow strand [of cotton] possibly of Egyptian origin, and quite old . . . it may have been used for repairs at some time in the past, or simply bound in when the linen fabric was woven."

I well remember that, at the time, no one (except the odd spin doctor) thought these results conclusive and asked for more material. This was denied.

Errors, Accuracy, and the Shroud

[PoolDoc]

Few of the possible ways to mistate, misrepresent, or mischaracterize the history of research on the Shroud have been overlooked here. One would have hoped, regardless of the attitudes held by various posters toward Catholic relics generally, or the Shroud particularly, that they would have had a greater regard for truth and accuracy then has here been displayed.

Lest there be any misunderstanding: I'm not Catholic, and have never venerated a relic of any sort, whether Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or even a SETI moonrock!

1. "The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus."

While there may well be a case where this occurred, the Catholic church does not now, nor has it ever in the past, recognized or authenticated the Shroud as an official relic. It's been the subject of some intense disputes with in the RC church, to the point that Pope Clement VII ordered that in the case of all future exhibitions, a priest present should "declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ." In fact, the theory that Shroud was only a painting -- whether forgery or 'representation' -- was advanced WITHIN the Catholic church over 600 years ago!

As an apparent result of these and other dispures, the Shroud seems to have been treated more as an embarrassment, than a relic the church wished to display or advertise.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) article for details: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13762a.htm

2. "It is doubtful he (Rogers) will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs."

Raymond Rogers, who authored the study, published in "Thermochimica Acta", that has generated all the hubbabaloo does NOT now claim that he, or anyone else has proved that the Shroud of Turin is the Shroud of Christ. To the contrary, he's been quoted as saying that "It's a shroud from the right time, but you're never going to find out (through science) if it was used on a person named Jesus".
http://tinyurl.com/68jfl (www.smh.com.au)

ABSTRACT OF THE ROGERS ARTICLE:
In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich determined the age of a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence. This came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample.

Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow-brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.
"Thermochimica Acta", Volume 425, Issues 1-2
http://tinyurl.com/4vy6r (www.sciencedirect.com)

3.Results of comprehensive STURP study of the Shroud, the consortium of scientists who physically examined the Shroud in 1978, was NOT sponsored or encouraged by the Catholic church, did NOT include many Catholics, and did NOT conclude that the Shroud of Turin was the Shroud of Christ. Raymond Rogers, who was a member of that team, was quoted at that time, when asked that question at a public press conference, as saying, "We do not have test for Jesus Christ. So, we can't hypothesize or test for that question."

"Report on the Shroud of Turin", Heller, 1983
used copies from Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/46fln

4. "So at best you can show that it was the death shroud of someone who died 2000 years ago via a mo