69.124.88.234

Great job

Thanks for taking on those flat-earthers at the Shroud of Turin page! You beat them so badly that they pulled their usual nonsense -- call you names, close the discussion, and then try to block you for showing how silly they are. It's the same usual suspects who guard that page from being updated to reflect the results of the most recent peer-reviewed scholarship. As you grasp, there is almost no one with scientific credentials who believe that the 1988 testing was accurate. Basically the only "Dr." who continues to support the c14 results is "Dr. Nickell" -- whose PhD is in English Literature! But his devotees, equally unqualified, control that page and have filled it with disinformation. 108.58.120.98 (talk) 18:44, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Please read WP:SOCK and WP:MEAT. tgeorgescu (talk) 07:25, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I see the flat-earth, science-denying community still stalks me. Why don't you read the 2021 paper by Schwalbe and Walsh, in which they abandon a prior claim that the C14 testing was accurate enough "within a range," and cite Casabianca's paper as persuasive on the point that it can no longer be assumed that the samples tested were representative of the cloth as a whole. Join Schwalbe, Walsh, me and the others in the science-affirming community:

"We review the radiocarbon data that were collected by the laboratories participating in the 1989 study of the Shroud of Turin and originally submitted to the British Museum for analysis and compilation. The raw data cited in the Casabianca report [5] and plotted against the distances between the centroid locations of the laboratory samples show a bifurcation in the data sets that Zurich and Arizona reported. The results of statistical analysis support the contention that the bifurcation is a real effect. The radiocarbon dates in Tier A also appear to show a linear dependence on the original sample locations corresponding to ~20 14C yrs/cm. An examination of the pretreatments applied to the individual Arizona and Zurich subsamples indicates that none of these procedures produced the bifurcation effect. However, it is possible the effect results from a non-uniform distribution of a contaminant that does not respond to the cleaning techniques applied in the radiocarbon study.

As the present findings join with observations of other unique aspects of the Shroud's makeup (see e.g. [11-13]), it appears the composition of the relatively small sample removed for the 1988 study is proving to be surprisingly complex. Indeed, the collection of evidence should encourage researchers to begin reconsidering the validity of the assumption that this sample adequately represents the composition of the Shroud as a whole. Should these concerns prompt follow-on radiocarbon studies, their test plans should include at a minimum 1) careful deliberations about sample locations, 2) a set of narrowly targeted non-destructive tests including optical microscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and UV fluorescence studies [14, 15], and 3) complete documentation not only of the sample locations on the main body of the cloth but also the locations of the subsamples, their respective δ13C values, %C content, pre-treatment yield etc" 69.124.88.234 (talk) 13:25, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Just for the record, here is the comment I left your page, which you have declined to address:

"Is there anyway that a broader collection of non-biased wikipedia editors could do something about this page, which is rigidly controlled by a handful of zealots? The page is really troubling. Let me give you just an example of one sentence, and analyze what is cited in "support" of that sentence.

Let's take a look at footnoted sources for the sentence: "Such fringe theories have been refuted by carbon-dating experts and others based on evidence from the shroud itself,[7] including the medieval repair theory,[8][9][10] the bio-contamination theories[11] and the carbon monoxide theory.[12][13]." Do these sources actually support this statement?

Footnote 8 is to a highly reputable paper which does, in fact, question Rogers' conclusions, but it does so in a far more nuanced way than this sentence suggests, concluding: "We assume that there will be future studies on the Shroud of Turin. Any such future sampling should include another sample of the shroud away from the previous area sampled. In our opinion, such a study would be useful to confirm the previous results and should include both textile analysis and 14C measurements." Thus, the authors of the paper themselves are not claiming to establish any scientific consensus." The link to this article is dead; so the reader cannot see just how badly the text twists the intentions of the author.

Footnote 9 is from a dead website/blog, not a scholarly paper, and the archived copy would reflect this website entry was from a personal blog of the author and not peer-reviewed. That's really not a worthy citation to rebut Rogers' peer-reviewed paper published in a scholarly U of Cal science journal. I don't have any problem with the credential of the author to write as he does. But he is plainly speaking personal opinion in this article, and not requesting peer-review -- in fact, he was being open and honest about that point.

Footnote 10 is to a Random House encyclopedia. Come on already. Try citing that in graduate school, see what happens. Although I have to say that this citation -- vague as it is -- by one "encyclopedia" to another, is about the only way to support that claim.

Footnote 11. I don't have any issue with this citation, per se, but it was published in 1990 and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. To claim it rebuts an article written 15 years later, though, is purposefully deceptive and would be academically sanctionable in other contexts. Good thing this isn't a reputable graduate school.

Footnote 12 cites to a web article by a genuine giant in this field, Dr. Christopher Bronk Ramsey. But it doesn't support the claim for which it is cited. Dr. Ramsey expresses measured doubt over the contamination by carbon monoxide theory, advanced by John Jackson, but he does not dismiss it out-of-hand: "The only way to see if this sort of contamination is possible is to do experimental work on modern linen. The key question is whether carbon monoxide reacts to any significant extent with linen." Notably, Dr. Ramsey also writes: "There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that we continue to test the accuracy of the original radiocarbon tests as we are already doing. It is equally important that experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information."

Footnote 13 is to an on-line chemistry publication. Again, not really a worthy source to establish the claimed scientific consensus.

Mind you each one of the claims made in this single sentence have been reasonably challenged by six consecutive, peer-reviewed, scholarly papers, published in a number some of the most reputable scientific journals." 69.124.88.234 (talk) 17:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

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