Jabba,
Please find a summary of the arguments against the invisible patch theory that have been put forth in this thread. Many of these arguments are powerful by themselves and even without other arguments would be enough to almost preclude the possibility of an invisible patch. When they are examined in the context of numerous other similarly strong arguments it is reasonable to conclude for all practical purposes that there is not an invisible patch in the area of the C14 sample and the invisible patch theory is false.
This, of course, will not stop shroud authenticity supporters from making arguments to support the invisible patch theory. That these kind of arguments exist is not probative with regard to the invisible patch theory. People deeply invested in shroud authenticity exist and they would be expected to make arguments in favor of shroud authenticity whether there is any rational basis for them or not. Thus, if somebody is trying to objectively examine evidence for the invisible patch theory it is necessary to examine the nature of the arguments and not just observe that they exist. If one does this in the case of the arguments in favor of the invisible patch theory I think the results will be clear. There are no arguments consistent with the evidence and reason that support the invisible patch theory.
The one argument which is not in this list is what I called the chemical homogeneity argument. This is the argument that the concentration of various elements is consistent in the shroud and the sample area. The original source of this argument might have been Antonacci. I was not able to find any source material to support Antonacci on this particular argument. The source of the 13 threads that he claims were tested is not clear and I could not find any documentation of the x-ray fluorescence testing that he claimed was done on the threads. I think there is a good chance that his argument is correct and that such testing was done. However, I think it is also possible that he made a good faith error on this.
Arguments against the Shroud of Turin invisible patch theory
1. Impossible to produce an undetectable invisible patch
There is no known method of patching a material like the Shroud of Turin that would produce a patch that could have been undetected by the peoplethat have inspected the shroud.
Comment: See the article by Mechthild Flury-Lemberg
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n65part5.pdf) for a good discussion of this point. See also all the links and posts in this thread for information about invisible mending and why invisible mending or invisible weaving is not undetectable mending.
All that is necessary to falsify the above is to publish a single example of a fabric that has been repaired in a way that would have been undetected by the kind of examination that the shroud was given. This has not been done despite masses of internet bits being used up by people promoting the invisible patch theory.
2. Even more difficult to produce an undetectable invisible patch without magnifying capability
Even if it was possible to produce an invisible patch today the difficulties would have been much greater in the sixteenth century before the widespread availability of magnifying glasses and before the development of the compound microscope.
Comment: Not only does the lack of magnifying capability add another layer of difficulty, why would somebody create a patch that was only detectable with magnifying capability when no such capability was widely available?
3. Not possible to create 16th century fabric that matches 1st century fabric in the 16th century
It would have been difficult if not impossible in the 16th century to create a new piece of fabric that so precisely matched the characteristics of a 1st century piece of fabric that the new material would not have been detected during the very careful examinations that the shroud has undergone particularly in 1982 when the cloth was carefully examined by STURP and in 2002 when the shroud backing was removed and restoration work was done on the shroud.
Comment: A common way of doing what is called "invisible mending" today is to take material from an inconspicuous place on the garment because it is difficult to match the existing threads well enough to fool the eye. If this was done on the shroud the C14 date wouldn't have been affected so that new material for the patch would have been required.
4. Detailed microscopic examination of C14 sample is consistent with overall shroud
A microscopic examination was done of the C14 sample material by Arizona scientists (Rachel A. Freer-Waters and A. J. Timothy Jull) and the area was observed to match other areas of the shroud in weave size and pattern.
Comment: The article by Freer-Waters and Jull is available here:
http://digitalcommons.library.arizo.../Number4/33737617-d6e4-4797-ba23-fb8e0f303abe The provenance of the sample they examined and photographed microscopically is well documented. The Arizona scientists made careful measurements of various properties of their shroud sample and found that they matched precisely the data about the shroud.
One of the main pieces of evidence put forth by Rogers that the C14 samples were done in an area where there was an invisible patch was that the C14 test area had traces of dye that weren't present in the main shroud. Freer-Waters and Jull did not find any signs of dyeing that was reported by Rogers on their C14 sample. Overall this paper provides a complete refutation of the Rogers' paper and it provides overwhelming evidence that the C14 test area was representative of the overall shroud.
5. Patch area was very carefully selected
The area for the patch was carefully selected after a month of careful study. There is no way that the scientists and scholars could not have seen that the samples they removed were from a patch.
Comment:
See
http://freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/articles/rogers-ta-response.htm for a discussion of this. See also many other comments by people involved in the selection process of the sample site for more information on this.
6. Why invisible patch when so many conventional patches already?
There is no apparent reason why somebody would attempt an invisible repair of the shroud when the shroud had numerous conventional patches already.
7. No documentation of an effort to create an invisible patch
There is no documentation of an effort to create an invisible patch on the shroud in existence today despite the fact that much of the history of the shroud was well documented and that history is available today.
8. Consistent banding through the C14 sample area
The threads in the C14 sample have the same density pattern as the threads in the adjoining areas.
Comment: This argument was put forth by Antonacci among others. The article he wrote challenging Rogers paper is available here:
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/debate.pdf. The argument is that there is a density pattern in the shroud that produces a kind of banding pattern when the shroud is carefully observed and that this banding pattern passes through the C14 sample area without any breaks or variations. This means that the individual making the hypothetical invisible patch to the shroud not only needed to make a patch with undetectable ends he needed to make a patch with threads that precisely matched the density of surrounding threads. The level of difficulty to make such a patch would be extreme even today. That such a patch would have been made in the 16th century is obviously nonsense. I didn't find a good visible light photograph to demonstrate this (Antonacci references them in his article but the on-line article doesn't have them) but I did find a radiograph of the area which I posted above (
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8447186#post8447186)
9. Consistent C14 results throughout the sample area
At least some of the invisible patch theory involves the notion that C14 sample site consisted of a mixture of old and new threads. The C14 test results were significantly consistent with each other. If the C14 sample area consisted of a mixture of fabric from different times the sample area would need to have consisted of the same ratio of old and new thread throughout the sample.
Comment: This is a strong argument against the idea of a local reweave where part of the original shroud remained. The hypothetical patch not only needed to be undetectable by normal microscopic examination but the patch area need to have retained the same amount of original material throughout the sample area.
10. Ad-hoc nature of the invisible patch theory
The claim of an invisible patch arose as part of a general pattern by authenticity supporters to impugn the C14 results. The ad hoc nature of this process suggests the possibility that the main driver for the creation of the invisible patch theory was to create a reason to discredit the C14 results even without a scientifically justified basis.
Notes on the above list: I had wanted to document it better before I posted it, but when Jabba said that he wanted to use arguments extracted from a post earlier as the list he wished to address and that he wanted to address the chemical homogeneity argument first I decided to post it in the condition it is. None of the arguments are original to me. I believe that all of these arguments have already been made in this thread and most of them are based on evidence published in credible sources.
