Posted on 08/11/2008 9:01:59 AM PDT by Soliton
The original samples were destroyed by the c-14 testing.
was originally Soliton's, not mine.
Incidentally, do I recall hearing or reading on one of these threads that the apparent age of the samples tracked linearly with their distance from the edge of the linen, and not just for samples A and E?
If I am mistaken in this, that's fine too -- I just thought I'd take the opportunity to confirm.
Also, have you read Radiocarbon Dating The Shroud: A Critical Statistical Analysis which you posted in #47 of this thread recently?
It is interesting how the data are massaged to change the statistical results; and how one of the people doing the calculations refused to share their calculations with the author.
Cheers!
Cheers!
Re: peer review
You really don’t read what was written, do you?
The tests done in 1973 were fairly simplistic tests designed for fairly fresh blood. They are basically the same tests that McCrone used. The tests do not work on old, denatured blood.
The Italian commission's attempts to dissolve the granules of what appeared to be blood during chemical treatment with acetic acid, oxygenated water, and glycerin of potassium were all unsuccessful. The commission's report states "the pigmented encrustations did not pass into solution in the solvents, acids and the alkalies we used."Dr. John Heller's specialty is in chemical analysis of blood. He states that the commission's and McCrone's negative test results were meaningless, explaining that "If you don't do the right tests in the right way, you can never get old blood into solution. If it's not in solution, you can't obtain a positive test."
I was replying to you to add to the refutation. I had decided to start ignoring Soliton so did not include him. Debating him is like shooting into a wall of marshmallow cream. It makes no impression.
You are correct, there appears to have been a transition zone between older and newer material running at a slight diagonal from bottom right to upper left, with the 'A' sample being composed of about 60% newer material on the left and 40% older material on the right (as viewed with the Shroud vertical with the dorsal image at the bottom), while the 'E' sample was just the opposite. This differing percentage of material by age is what resulted in the statistical conclusion by Remi Van Haelst in his statistical review of the C14 results (reported in Radiocarbon Dating the Shroud of Turin: the Nature Report ) that showed mathematically that sub-samples 'A' and 'E' were not part of the same sample population even though they were supposedly cut from a homogenous sample. Sample 'B' averaged about 55% new to 45% old, with sample 'D' being again the opposite. The remaining sample 'C" is almost exactly an estimated 50-50.
It is also consistent with it being paint
More of your cut-and-paste mindset. I doubt you will read this, but here it is anyway.
So you think that the opinions of three nonspecialists, who did not publish their criticisms in ANY peer reviewed scientific journal, are the equivalent of the science reported in peer reviewed journals and books?
Who are these bozos you hold up as paragons of scientific wisdom?
Joe Nickell, PhD. (in English Literature), ex-college English instructor, failed amateur magician, ex-journalist, ex-private investigator, Senior Research Fellow—Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Recipient of awards he gives himself: He was a co-recipient of the 2005 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, awarded by CSICOP. Talk about self validation. (Kinda reminds me of the testimonial letters awarded to the scarecrow by the Wizard of Oz.)
John F. Fischer, BA, MS (Criminology), ex-police officer, ex-criminalist, once a forensic analyst for the Orange County, Florida, Sheriff's department. He now runs a one-man business: "Forensic Research & Supply Corporation." Co-author of skeptic and forensic science popularization books with Joe Nickell. Does that make him qualified to deny the findings of people far more expert than he?
Marvin Mueller, PhD. (Physics), the only real doctorate level scientist in this skeptics group, with a PhD in Physics, who specializes in developing high-energy laser weaponry for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Does that make him an expert in biochemistry?
You maintain that these three are qualified to critique world class specialists in the biochemistry of blood, blood fractions, and hemoglobin, blood derivatives, and blood chemistry about their field of expertise?
Exactly WHAT makes you think that a magician, a criminologist, and a physicist has even a clue about the extremely complex organic-chemistry specialty of the peer reviewed scientists they are challenging, claiming that their amateur "expertise" (even a PhD in physics is an amateur when he attempts organic-chemistry) trumps scientists who have studied and published in their fields' of expertise for years.
The group of three make a big deal about how the fact that Fischer has testified in court as an expert on blood and blood stains. I suspect that the victims blood he is testing and testifying about has been drying for a lot less time than 600 years. To assume his blood expertise can extend to 600 to 2000 year old blood stains strains credulity. Let's not even talk about the magician/private dick/paranormal investigator's credentials.
These three "experts" have the temerity to accuse these scientists of incompetence and of practicing "pseudoscience," just as you have on this thread.
Exactly who are these impugned scientists?
John R. Heller, M.D. PhD., (Medicine, biochemistry), previously a professor in medicine, biochemistry, and medical-physics at Yale University who concentrated his research in blood porphyrins at the New England Institute for Medical Research—doing basic research in the common areas of biology, physics and chemistry—which he confounded).
Professor Alan Adler, PhD., (Chemistry), Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut State University. Author of hundreds of peer reviewed articles on various researches in chemistry and biochemistry, particularly about the chemistry of the porphyrins, describing their synthetic, analytical, chemical-physical and biological aspects.
Bruce Cameron PhDs., (Chemistry and Biochemistry dual doctorate specializing in hemoglobin and myoglobins), Professor of biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Department of Chemistry, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, Director Papanicolaou Cancer Research Institute, Miami, Florida. Dr. Cameron developed many of the tests that were used by Heller and Adler in determining that the stains on the Shroud of Turin were blood. He has 100s of citations to his name, and a number of patents on the tests.
These are the scientists that Nickell, Fischer, and Mueller claim are incompetent to test the Shroud and incapable of telling the difference between Iron Oxide pigment with vermilion and blood. The ones who Nickell, et al, claim are mistaking plant materials for blood fractions, egg albumin for hemoglobin, etc. These are the scientists who NF&M claim are biased Christians distorting science to support mystical explanations (ignoring the fact that not one of them has made any such claim... and the inconvenient fact that Alan Adler was Jewish!)
Although this is appeal to authority, a sometimes logical fallacy, the opinions of some authorities—who have had their work validated by their peers and published where it can be criticized—are much more valuable than the opinions of a bunch of bozos who certainly have an agenda.
I will put up my expert witnesses against yours any day. I follow the science. Not the wishful thinking of people who desperately want to deny anything about religion might have validity.
Basil smiled at me. `You didn't know,' he said, `that I had a practical brother. This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does all there is to be done. Just as I was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything. I remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a schoolmaster, a---what are you now, Rupert?'
`I am and have been for some time,' said Rupert, with some dignity, `a private detective, and there's my client.'
Cheers!
It is also consistent with it being paint
It is also consistent with it being granite; or diamond; or buffalo wing sauce.
This is why the further tests performed by Heller and Adler were done, using physical and chemical tests, which *were* specific for components of blood; why they used controls; and why the further positive tests for blood, using multiple independent methods, are significant.
This is also why McCrone's tests, which were systematically flawed, where the matrix for his samples interfered with his results to give false positives, and which gave different results in a later paper, are meaningless.
Why do you cling to work which has been shown by later studies to have been performed improperly and to have given incorrect *and* inconsistent results?
Cheers!
It's not supposed to be done by employees, which is why McCrone's work is suspect -- he did not allow members of his Institute access to his samples in order to perform independent tests until after he published; and then (apparently) he had some of his employees do the "objective" peer review.
McCrone and his chorus are literally acting like Democrats: they are projecting all of their own demonstrated faults onto their opponents, who have not been committing these faults at all.
Rogers' paper has nothing to do with the usual topics covered in TA; he could have submitted his paper to a dozen journals for all we know before finding one whose editor was incompetent or lazy enough to not understand why Rogers' paper was pseudoscience and thus deserved to be rejected outright.
Care to verify this statement? -- and again, it is speculation -- "for all we know" and ad hominem "incompetent or lazy"?
For over twenty years I have claimed that arguments based on science and technology that purport to demonstrate the Shroud's authenticity are nothing more than pseudoscience, and pro-authenticity Shroud advocates are pseudoscientists. This includes Ray Rogers and all the other STURP members with the exception of Walter McCrone, a former member of STURP and the single individual with scientific integrity and professional competence among them.
Read earlier in the thread for the scientific credentials of those who investiaged the Shroud. And as pointed out earlier, McCrone was not a member of STURP. And as pointed out earlier, McCrone screwed up his own analysis so bad (by using a matrix to hold his samples which itself interfered with the measurements) that his conclusions changed from one paper to the next. And he used no controls. And he admitted personal bias in his choice of methodology. And he admitted that the bias led him to withhold samples from testing by other methods.
Shroud Derangement Syndrome.
Pwned.
Cheers!
Yes he was at one time
(And good luck with the buffalo wing sauce).
McCrone resigned from the STURP team in June of 1980. In McCrone’s words, he was “drummed out” of STURP. Heller, however, stated that McCrone resigned after being “insulted” by the STURP’s reviewers’ conclusion that the papers McCrone submitted to be vetted for publication contained data that were “misrepresented”, observations that were “highly questionable”, and conclusions that were “pontifications” rather than “scientific logic” (Heller, Report on the Shroud of Turin, p. 184).
Not according to the all the listings of membership that I have seen including those provided to the Catholic Church prior to going to Turin... and personal statements to me from Barrie Schworthz. He was asked after the STURP 1978 investigation to lend his microscopic expertise to the project by Raymond Rogers.
STURP was a project, not an organization. He very definately was part of that project and was bound contractually. We may be arguing definitions, not facts.
Since you are the epert on the shroud here, can you point me to some information on how Prof. Luigi Gonella came to be in posession of fibers from the c-14 samples, and particularly, the Raes sample?
I am reading several books on the subject at the moment and cannot find any witness to the provenance of these fibers.
Since you are the expert on the shroud here, can you point me to some information on how Prof. Luigi Gonella came to be in posession of fibers from the c-14 samples, and particularly, the Raes sample?
I am reading several books on the subject at the moment and cannot find any witness to the provenance of these fibers.
I must disagree. STURP was an organization that had a project. It was also a project that had an organization. One is not separate from the other. STURP has a membership, and a board of directors. It has a corporate identity and, IIRC, a designation as a non-profit entity, with a Federal Employers' Identification Number.
Yep, I'm right.
This page will present an overview of the first ever in-depth scientific examination of the Shroud of Turin, performed by an international team of experts in 1978. A large part of that group consisted of the Shroud of Turin Research Project, Inc., (STURP), a team of American scientists and researchers that spent over two years preparing a series of tests that would gather a vast amount of Shroud data in a relatively short period of time. STURP's primary goal was to determine the scientific properties of the image on the Shroud of Turin, and what might have caused it.
McCrone may have considered himself part of the STURP project, having been recruited in 1978 by Raymond Rogers to do some microscopic work, but he was never a member of STURP, the corporation. At most, as I have said before, McCrone was an ancillary researcher who overstepped his agreements and refused to return STURP custodial property to the organization.
I don't know. I do know that fibers and threads were sent to qualified investigators on request and under strict controls about what could be done with them. I know that some researchers were less than ethical about what they actually did with them. For example, McCrone;s mounting of threads on a non-protocol matrix and at least one researcher doing an unauthorized, destructive C14 test on a thread in his custody.
I have three books on the way. I won’t be responding for a while.
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