Thermal
August Member
Good point, but in fairness, it's a nearly quarter century old paper. Davey Ford may well have since shed his mortal coil in addition to his edu email. We should check his bedsheets.
Does the Shroud of Turin Show Expected Elongation of the Head in 2D?"
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catsmate
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I meant to post this earlier but homecoming distracted me.
Actual Science Alert!!!!
While certain shroudies, like our own @bobdroege7 like to claim that there are other burial cloths, actually dated to teh first century, that resemble the Lirey cloth (and include the medieval herringbone pattern) this is, of course, not true
There aren't a lot of such shrouds around to study (it's a busy area) but one was found in a tomb in the Hinnom Valley, on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem, way back in 2000.
Testing, which wasn't a high priority (given that no-one in the archaeological community takes the Turin cloth nonsense seriously) , took some years.
First, as Jewish burial practies would require there are two cloths. The fragments of the shroud discovered in Jerusalem; one made of linen, used to wrap the head, and another made of wool, which wrapped the body.
Quite in keeping with Jewish tradition of the time,
And then there's the herringbone weave, that @bobdroege7 claims to have proof was used in that period. Or rather the abject lack of such a weave pattern, the discovered shroud fragments have a simple two-way weave.
Bones found in the same burial niche as the fragments were dated to the years 1-50 CE by radiocarbon techniques.
DNA and other tests showed that the man buried in the cave had leprosy and died of tuberculosis.
Oh dear.
Actual Science Alert!!!!
While certain shroudies, like our own @bobdroege7 like to claim that there are other burial cloths, actually dated to teh first century, that resemble the Lirey cloth (and include the medieval herringbone pattern) this is, of course, not true
There aren't a lot of such shrouds around to study (it's a busy area) but one was found in a tomb in the Hinnom Valley, on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem, way back in 2000.
Testing, which wasn't a high priority (given that no-one in the archaeological community takes the Turin cloth nonsense seriously) , took some years.
Also for the believers it's not even close.
First, as Jewish burial practies would require there are two cloths. The fragments of the shroud discovered in Jerusalem; one made of linen, used to wrap the head, and another made of wool, which wrapped the body.
Quite in keeping with Jewish tradition of the time,
And then there's the herringbone weave, that @bobdroege7 claims to have proof was used in that period. Or rather the abject lack of such a weave pattern, the discovered shroud fragments have a simple two-way weave.
Bones found in the same burial niche as the fragments were dated to the years 1-50 CE by radiocarbon techniques.
DNA and other tests showed that the man buried in the cave had leprosy and died of tuberculosis.
Oh dear.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Regardless, at the time he wrote the paper he listed his qualification only as a graduate of the university in a field only tangentially related to the subject of the paper. The paper itself has been much discussed in the shroud debate, and I don't propose to address its claims in this post. Besides, the point of bringing up Ford here seems to have been to support an argument that scholarship supporting the authenticity claims should not be so easily dismissed because the authors are well-qualified professionals or academics writing within their respective fields of expertise according to accepted scientific conventions and standards.
That doesn't appear to hold in David Ford's case. The claim that Ford is or was a professor at the University of Maryland is presented without evidence, nor can anyone seem to corroborate the claim. That makes the endorsement unsupported at best and fabricated at worst. The lack of due diligence in this case throws doubt on the value of the other endorsements. In any case, the state of shroud scholarship is well established. The vast majority of it appears to be self-published, not peer reviewed, and only somewhat related to the professional or academic interests of the author. In fact, some of it that I have seen explicitly says that the shroud-related activity is not to be construed as part of their professional work or endorsed by the institutions that employ them.
catsmate
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I have emailed the university and asked a more academic SO to do so also.
Thermal
August Member
I'm not finding any David Ford listed by UM even in their staff and student archives or anything....
Student, Faculty and Staff Directories | University Libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries digitized staff, faculty, and student directories from 1927 to 1961 as part of its work with the Internet Archive. Information included in these volumes for faculty and staff consists of the individual’s name, job title, academic or administrative unit...
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
While it would settle part of the claim, it's largely moot. The paper was written according to the expertise and authority of someone who was merely a graduate and claimed no further expertise at the time of its writing. It doesn't matter if he went on to win a Nobel Prize. If the scholarly value of the paper is to be inferred from the qualifications of its author aside from any intrinsic merit it might have, then it should be inferred from the qualifications claimed by its author at the time of writing.
The part of the claim it would settle is simply whether @mikegriffith1 is truthful in his claim that Ford is or was a professor at the University of Maryland in any time frame that would lend weight to his endorsement of Ford as an expert. But the best way to discover whether Mike has done due diligence before offering his endorsement would be to invite him to present the evidence he used in determining Ford's academic qualifications. Even if it turns out the Ford at some time became a professor—and we're able to determine that on our own—it doesn't validate an endorsement made without due diligence on the part of the claimant. The claimant does not get credit for being accidentally right if the claim entails offering a personal endorsement in the absence of evidence.
catsmate
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He seems to have been an undergraduate when he wrote that "paper". He dabbled in chess and creationism while at university.I'm not finding any David Ford listed by UM even in their staff and student archives or anything....
Student, Faculty and Staff Directories | University Libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries digitized staff, faculty, and student directories from 1927 to 1961 as part of its work with the Internet Archive. Information included in these volumes for faculty and staff consists of the individual’s name, job title, academic or administrative unit...www.lib.umd.edu
I *may* have tracked him down. He certainly hasn't published anything in any journal of note.
catsmate
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Agreed.
Thermal
August Member
Since the paper proclaimed him to be a graduate, I was not looking through the undergrad directories.
mikegriffith1
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The fact of the matter is that most of the scientists who have studied the Shroud have concluded it is not a manmade fabrication but is the authentic image of a crucified man. The skeptics' response to this fact is to argue that no one who believes in God can be a credible scientist.
We have people in this thread making false claims about firmly established facts, such as the claim that the image on the Shroud is not a negative image. The whole reason that critics denounced Secondo Pia's 1898 photographs of the Shroud is that they proved the Shroud's image is a negative image. Critics claimed that Pia either botched the photographing and/or developing of the pictures or that he fabricated them. The fact that the Shroud's image is like a photographic negative sent shockwaves through the scientific community and sparked intensive scholarly interest in the Shroud.
The next photos of the Shroud were taken in 1931 by Guiseppe Enrie. As had Pia, Enrie, too, found that the Shroud's image is a negative image.
The best photos taken of the Shroud were taken in 1978 by STURP member Vernon D. Miller, a renowned scientific photographer from the Brooks Institute of Photography. You can find Miller's photos here, along with some useful information: LINK.
I also recommend reading the paper "Quantitative Photography of the Shroud of Turin," written by Miller and Don Devan and published in
IEEE 1982 Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society (LINK).
Don Devan was another scientific photographer and also an expert in image analysis. Devan studied physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. He then worked in computer image analysis and software systems for GE TEMPO, Information Science, Oceanographic Services, and SAIC. His expertise in computer image analysis was the reason he was invited to join STURP.
Here's an excerpt from Miller and Devan's article:
What Pia's negatives revealed was the fact that the Shroud takes on a life-like, well-resolved, subtly shaded photographic "print-like" quality when seen as a photographic negative image. Consequently, as illustrated by Figure 1, the actual image on the cloth must have the grey shade reversal properties of a photographic negative. This discovery, in and of itself, elevated the Shroud from relative obscurity to the object of sometimes passionate curiosity and investigation which it has since become.
As a result of such investigations, several other "unusual" visual properties of the Shroud have emerged (explanation for which must form a crucial part of any understanding of the nature of the image):
As shown by Figure 2, the pattern of intensity variations of the image (as measured by densitometric scans of photographic negatives) appears to correlate with the (hypothetical) distance between the elevation contours of a human body and a cloth presumed draped over that body. That such a consistent correlation exists has been qualitatively shown: I.e., the image is most intense when the cloth-body distance is a minimum, and vice-versa. Moreover, the intensity fall-off is roughly consistent with cloth-body distance regardless of where on the image the comparison is made.
We have people in this thread making false claims about firmly established facts, such as the claim that the image on the Shroud is not a negative image. The whole reason that critics denounced Secondo Pia's 1898 photographs of the Shroud is that they proved the Shroud's image is a negative image. Critics claimed that Pia either botched the photographing and/or developing of the pictures or that he fabricated them. The fact that the Shroud's image is like a photographic negative sent shockwaves through the scientific community and sparked intensive scholarly interest in the Shroud.
The next photos of the Shroud were taken in 1931 by Guiseppe Enrie. As had Pia, Enrie, too, found that the Shroud's image is a negative image.
The best photos taken of the Shroud were taken in 1978 by STURP member Vernon D. Miller, a renowned scientific photographer from the Brooks Institute of Photography. You can find Miller's photos here, along with some useful information: LINK.
I also recommend reading the paper "Quantitative Photography of the Shroud of Turin," written by Miller and Don Devan and published in
IEEE 1982 Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society (LINK).
Don Devan was another scientific photographer and also an expert in image analysis. Devan studied physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. He then worked in computer image analysis and software systems for GE TEMPO, Information Science, Oceanographic Services, and SAIC. His expertise in computer image analysis was the reason he was invited to join STURP.
Here's an excerpt from Miller and Devan's article:
What Pia's negatives revealed was the fact that the Shroud takes on a life-like, well-resolved, subtly shaded photographic "print-like" quality when seen as a photographic negative image. Consequently, as illustrated by Figure 1, the actual image on the cloth must have the grey shade reversal properties of a photographic negative. This discovery, in and of itself, elevated the Shroud from relative obscurity to the object of sometimes passionate curiosity and investigation which it has since become.
As a result of such investigations, several other "unusual" visual properties of the Shroud have emerged (explanation for which must form a crucial part of any understanding of the nature of the image):
As shown by Figure 2, the pattern of intensity variations of the image (as measured by densitometric scans of photographic negatives) appears to correlate with the (hypothetical) distance between the elevation contours of a human body and a cloth presumed draped over that body. That such a consistent correlation exists has been qualitatively shown: I.e., the image is most intense when the cloth-body distance is a minimum, and vice-versa. Moreover, the intensity fall-off is roughly consistent with cloth-body distance regardless of where on the image the comparison is made.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
We have people in this thread who have addressed your previous walls of copy-pasta without any subsequent engagement from you. Any chance you'll make this thread an interactive experience?
mikegriffith1
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Uh-huh. They have "addressed" my posts by issuing summary denials, by claiming that all the scientists/experts who reject their attacks on the Shroud are religious zealots who can't be trusted, and by citing (usually with no links) a handful of scholars whose arguments have been thoroughly answered by a far greater number of scholars.
When you guys can't even bring yourselves to admit that the Shroud's image is a negative image, that shows you are hopelessly biased and have only read one side of the story.
Reformed Offlian
Master Poster
What is David Ford a professor of, @mikegriffith1
Reformed Offlian
Master Poster
I haven't done any of those things in my responses to you, @mikegriffith1 , and yet you have yet to reply to any of them. So I know you're lying here. Care to try again?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No.
You tauntingly urged me to watch The Real Face of Jesus, which you postured as a documentary substantiating the 3D reconstruction efforts. I did so, and gave you a thorough review which you completely ignored. If you are unwilling to address careful rebuttals, no one is obliged to provide them to you.
You presented the names of people you endorsed as well-qualified scholars, chastising your critics for not accepting them as such. But at least one—David Ford—does not even make the same claims to expertise as you do on his behalf. If you pay so little attention to your own sources, why should anyone else?
Reformed Offlian
Master Poster
If it were really a b&w negative, the hair should not be the same tone as the skin. Did Jesus have flesh-colored hair?
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Okay, I read the paper. It basically says, "We took some better pictures of the shroud than were previously available."
Good for him. The techniques he applied to photographing the shroud are unremarkable calibrations that were common in all sorts of documentary photography at the time. Any documentary photographer in any museum in the world would have been familiar with them. It's good that they were applied to the shroud, but the paper doesn't attempt to resolve any controversial claims about the shroud's origin or purportedly unique presentation.
Yes, that's from the paper's introductory section where the authors summarize previous photographic documentation of the shroud and represent the various prior hypothesis and conjectures that the authors hoped could be further investigated by the product of their proposed work.
Was that supposed to be impressive?
mikegriffith1
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I read your reply and thought it was evasive, superficial, and really downright ridiculous. Your argument boils down to saying that all the experts who appear in the documentary are wrong and that you know better than they do. I don't think so. And what exactly are your qualifications compared to those of the experts in the documentary?
As for Ford, are you going to address the points he makes in his article? I know he graduated with a master's degree from the University of Maryland in history and philosophy, and I know he was listed as vice president of the University of Maryland's (UMBC) chess club. So, the man is clearly educated. And, if you read his article, you'll learn that he consulted with Dr. Alan Adler.
Oh, but that's right: You guys say Adler was unqualified to talk about blood stains on the Shroud. Yeah, never mind that he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and at Western Connecticut University, that he was a senior staff scientist at the New England Institute, that he specialized in porphyrins and blood chemistry, that he was a long-time member of the American Chemical Society, and that he published hundreds of articles on chemistry and biochemistry, particularly about the chemistry of porphyrins, describing their synthetic, analytical, chemical-physical, and biological aspects.
catsmate
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Bollocks. In reality very few scientists have examined the shroud, and those who have tend towards a medieval origin.
Strawman.
No, we have people making unsupported claims which are then debunked.
Actually, no. The vast majority of people have probably never heard of your dubious cloth.
Is there some reason for posting this irrelevant nonsense?