Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[carlitos]

Everybody Wang Chung tonight.

 

[Dinwar]

I have no doubt that you are correct, but it's fallacious logic.

I don't think I've ever compared someone's logic with Creationist logic and had it NOT be a fallacy!

 

[Slowvehicle]

Do you pun in real life, or only on the Internet where you can be anonymous in your anomalous use of words?

I am an invertebrate paranomasiac...

I firmly believe that the shortest distance between two puns is a straightline.

And the beauty of a pun is in the "OY!" of the beholder.

My students all threaten to get up and walk to the other high school, for things like this:

When the Student Association gave all the teachers triangular felt flags to celebrate the Football Team winning the 6-A New Mexico High School Football Championship, I thanked each one of them for helping us get ready for Lent, early...





...with "pennants"...

 

[Slowvehicle]

Fie upon you, I say FIE. I spent this very day shooting partridges from the back of deer on my six million acre tidy lawn.

Clearly, this is evidence that the shroud is the very first Christmas bauble of bovine fecal matter.

Or I could be wrong. Or making it up.

Out of whole cloth.

"FIE"?

Feh, I say! What caliber of partridge do your fowling-pieces take?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Jabba - just in case nobody has asked you yet - what's the evidence that the CIQ is 2000 years old, please?

Or, you know, Mr. Savage: You could start out by presenting all the evidence you have that the CIQ is 2000 years old. Once you get that done, you are free to explain how the ¹⁴C dating ganged agley.

 

[Degeneve]

Er... Gerard Lucotte, "Vérités sur le Saint Suaire," Atelier Fol'fer, 2010, contains nearly 100 pages of electron micrographs of fragments claimed to be from the surface of the Shroud, many including X-ray spectrographic analysis, some of which are indeed claimed to be red blood cells.

More than ten years ago Lucotte announced he would provide the proof that the blood found on the shroud, on the sudarium of Oviedo and on the tunic of Argenteuil has an identical DNA. We are still waiting his publication on this topic.

Beside I wonder when and how Lucotte could have got access to material coming from the shroud.

 

[carlitos]

my emphasis added

I predict that Jabba will ignore this post. He purportedly has 3 hours a day, but cannot answer a yes or no question. I leave you to your own conclusions.

(eta - i just typed 'yes' in 1/3 of a second.)

- I have 2, maybe 3, hours a day that I can justify spending on this stuff. I wish it was my job, and I could justify 8 hours a day! Really.

Giordano,
- You're right. I was just quoting someone else about such documents. I'll see if I can locate what he was referring to.

- Now, I gotta go back and figure out why Heller and Adler were so sure that the porphyrin indicated blood.

2. Did you even read the article about porphyrins (not just "porphyrin")?

Did you read their actual paper? Not quotes of it, or paraphrasing, but the actual paper?

Did you read the actual article?

And, as others have asked, did you read the actual paper? Is that part of "everything that you have read?"

Just curious- for the third time, did you read the actual manuscript, not just second hand interpretations of it?

Dear Mr. Jabba,

If you can't answer a "yes or no" question in three hours a day, you really, really probably shouldn't be trying to fix the human condition via debate rules.

Yes or no - Did you read the Heller and Adler paper? Yes or No?

....... please answer the yes/no question that has been repeatedly asked of you and to which you must already have the answer: did you actually read the entire H and A paper yourself, or were you simply taking the word of the pro-Shroud people who paraphrased it? It would take you a second: just copy one of the words below:

Yes
No

Given that you had the time to post this and yet failed to post a simple yes or no to my question, I will assume that you never read the actual H and A paper yourself. Given that you presented quotes alleged to be from this paper as evidence, doesn't it worry you that you appear to not have looked at their actual evidence or the actual statements in their publication?

.......Heller and Adler (hereafter H&A) concluded that it was actual blood material on the basis of [blah blah blah]

- From these two statements, it appears that H&A found precisely what should be found if the stains are blood, and McCrone Associates did not find what most likely would be found if the stains are paint.

- Also, the H&A papers claiming that the stains are blood were both peer-reviewed. As best I can remember, there has never been a peer-reviewed paper claiming that the stains are paint – am I missing something?

Did you read either of these papers yourself? From the nature of your quotes I don't think so.

Hi Jabba,

.....

Did you read the Heller and Adler paper?

 

[Slowvehicle]

I think his material was entirely from Riggi di Numana's hooverings. For an outline of his work, try "http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380797812_Lucotte.pdf." There is a rather poor scan of some of his SEM photos at "http://imageshack.com/f/23/01p2.jpg."

I get annoying hipster ads for Imageshack at that link.

Not to mention:

One of the procedures agreed for the 1978 testing work was the partial unstitching of one side of the Shroud from the backing cloth to which it had been sewn ever since 1534, and this made possible one of Riggi’s most important on-site experiments on that occasion. Deploying a mini-vacuum cleaner he painstakingly extracted into this some of the dust that had accumulated between the two cloths over the centuries. Subsequently analysing this dust microscopically, he became fascinated by the various mites that this included, also the wealth of other debris such as pollen grains and distinctive limestone crystals. In the case of the mites, he made some useful comparisons with similar creatures that he found to have infested the fine collection of ancient Egyptian mummies in Turin’s Egyptian Museum. (With typical generosity he subsequently gave me a small album of the black and white photographs that he had taken of this aspect of his work.) And his careful reporting of the fungi and bacteria he found among the Shroud’s dusts would be directly helpful to the future conservation measures taken to protect the Shroud.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n67part9.pdf

Even if di Numana's "hooverings" had an unimpeachable chain of custody, it beggars the imagination to make the claim that what was "hoovered" is a sample of what is, or was, on the CIQ. Mr. Savage has complained about the lack controls in the selection, excision, and packaging of what are clearly samples of the medieval linen comprising the CIQ; how does a vacuum bag and its contents, in di Numana's sole possession, rise to the standard about which Mr. Savage complains? With that level of dubious provenance, it simply does not matter if Lucotte claims to have recovered entire white blood cells and undegraded platelets--there is no way to demonstrate that the contents of di Numama's bag were ever in contact with, much less part of, or recovered from, the CIQ.

SO I amend my statement, with thanks for your help: No one has demonstrated the presence of blood cells on the CIQ.

 

[Dinwar]

I think we can assume that the samples of dust were relatively clean--there are some pretty simple ways to do so, and if there was a single person in possession of the samples, the chain of custody is unbroken (storage and handling are another issue).

The real problem I see is the assumption that what was found between the cloths has any bearing on the cloth. Such ort would reflect the things that came into contact with the shroud--including, presumably, folks coming back from the holy lands. They likely had relics and other debris with them, which contained material from those lands of various ages. There simply is no way to use this dust accumulation to say anything about the shroud. About all we can say is that the pieces accumulated after the shroud and backing were joined, and that the pieces are older than the accumulation at the point in which they were added (I wonder if any formed after the accumulation started, and were added later? Never heard of it in rocks, but could be an interesting concept to play with).

For those looking for more info, this process is known as time averaging and space averaging in paleontology. The scales are different (typically we look at de positional basins the size of lakes or bigger), but the concepts are transferable.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I think we can assume that the samples of dust were relatively clean--there are some pretty simple ways to do so, and if there was a single person in possession of the samples, the chain of custody is unbroken (storage and handling are another issue). <snip>

With all due respect, what we have is one person asserting that the material he delivered to Lucotte was the material "hoovered" from between the CIQ and the backing cloth. That level of CoC would not fly in one of Mr. Savage's theoretical courtrooms.

 

[Loss Leader]

SO I amend my statement, with thanks for your help: No one has demonstrated the presence of blood cells on the CIQ.

Which doesn't matter in any case, because every single person who ever handled the relic was full of five quarts of blood. That's this much:


[IMGw=200]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=681&pictureid=9855[/IMGw][IMGw=200]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=681&pictureid=9855[/IMGw][IMGw=200]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=681&pictureid=9855[/IMGw][IMGw=200]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=681&pictureid=9855[/IMGw][IMGw=200]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=681&pictureid=9855[/IMGw]

 

[Dinwar]

With all due respect, what we have is one person asserting that the material he delivered to Lucotte was the material "hoovered" from between the CIQ and the backing cloth. That level of CoC would not fly in one of Mr. Savage's theoretical courtrooms.

Not without a description of the process, and a lab report for the cleanliness of the filters used, no. Plus, as I said, storage and handling are the real issue--even assuming that the samples were taken properly, unless we knew the conditions in which they were stored and processed, the risk of contamination would be FAR too high. We don't process microfossils in the field for this reason. A vacuum with a new filter would be sufficient to start with, but I would need to see the curation facilities before I accepted it.

You missed my point, though. My point is, even making every assumption we can that puts this in the best light possible, it STILL can't be used as evidence of, well, anything. At that point, not dismissing the "evidence" is perverse.

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Typo fixed by your friendly, neighborhood mod

 

[Slowvehicle]

Not without a description of the process, and a lab report for the cleanliness of the filters used, no. Plus, as I said, storage and handling are the real issue--even assuming that the samples were taken properly, unless we knew the conditions in which they were stored and processed, the risk of contamination would be FAR too high. We don't process microfossils in the field for this reason. A vacuum with a new filter would be sufficient to start with, but I would need to see the curation facilities before I accepted it.

You missed my point, though. My point is, even making every assumption we can that puts this in the best light possible, it STILL can't be used as evidence of, well, anything. At that point, not dismissing the "evidence" is perverse.

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Typo fixed by your friendly, neighborhood mod

No, I got your point--I was simply making a different one...that "assuming" good praxis is a mug's game. (I'm rewriting my Forensic Science curriculum, based in part on the ASF's recommendations after the recent FBI debacles.)

 

[hugh farey]

I get annoying hipster ads for Imageshack at that link.

Strange. I get a different collection of ads, but no image now. I found it by Googling "Gerard Lucotte" "Shroud" in Images.

Even if di Numana's "hooverings" had an unimpeachable chain of custody, it beggars the imagination to make the claim that what was "hoovered" is a sample of what is, or was, on the CIQ. Mr. Savage has complained about the lack controls in the selection, excision, and packaging of what are clearly samples of the medieval linen comprising the CIQ; how does a vacuum bag and its contents, in di Numana's sole possession, rise to the standard about which Mr. Savage complains? With that level of dubious provenance, it simply does not matter if Lucotte claims to have recovered entire white blood cells and undegraded platelets--there is no way to demonstrate that the contents of di Numama's bag were ever in contact with, much less part of, or recovered from, the CIQ.

I think that's fair enough. Riggi di Numana certainly did some hoovering, and I think it's fair to assume he kept his bits safe. Archaeology often works more on that kind of assumption than the chains of provenance required to save someone from the gallows (or to put them there!). However, his sample included whatever had accumulated between the Shroud and its backing cloth between 1532 and 1988, either falling off the back of Shroud, or dropping in through the holes. He has numerous photos of insect debris, mineral particles and so on. His work is widely rejected as useful, even if valid, even by authenticists. However, you wanted a claim for red blood cells and I gave you one.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Strange. I get a different collection of ads, but no image now. I found it by Googling "Gerard Lucotte" "Shroud" in Images.

I think that's fair enough. Riggi di Numana certainly did some hoovering, and I think it's fair to assume he kept his bits safe. Archaeology often works more on that kind of assumption than the chains of provenance required to save someone from the gallows (or to put them there!).

I'm just going to leave this there. Why should di Numana, committed to "authenticity", get the assumption of probity from Mr. Savage, while three separate laboratories, committed to evidence, get accusations of incompetence, dishonesty, bias, fraud, and collusion?

However, his sample included whatever had accumulated between the Shroud and its backing cloth between 1532 and 1988, either falling off the back of Shroud, or dropping in through the holes. He has numerous photos of insect debris, mineral particles and so on.

As long as one assumes good faith,and good praxis, on his part.

His work is widely rejected as useful, even if valid, even by authenticists.

I am not sure what you think "...rejected as useful even if valid..." means.

However, you wanted a claim for red blood cells and I gave you one.

Hmmm. You may have missed the bit where, with thanks for your material, I amended my statement. You are correct: at least one person has claimed to find blood cells and blood cell fragments in detritus allegedly associated with the CIQ.

Of course, for perspective, people have claimed to have found the recognizable image of roman coins over eyes of the figure on the CIQ.

People have claimed to have detected the effects of a burst of "resurrection energy" on the CIQ.

The claim of finding blood cells in the CIQ is in good company.

 

[Dinwar]

I am not sure what you think "...rejected as useful even if valid..." means.

If I may: Even if the samples he collected ARE from between the shroud and the backing, AND they remained uncontaminated--ie, they represent a valid subset of the material collected between the shroud and the backing--the samples do not provide any information about, well, anything. There is simply no way to use these samples to support either a pro-authenticity or anti-authenticity argument.

I'm just going to leave this there. Why should di Numana, committed to "authenticity", get the assumption of probity from Mr. Savage, while three separate laboratories, committed to evidence, get accusations of incompetence, dishonesty, bias, fraud, and collusion?

While it is valid to raise the issue of what constitutes an acceptable level of data management, I think that focusing on that in this case is flawed. The issue is that Jabba's criteria are wholely irrational. In science, it's very, very, VERY frequent for someone to take samples without much chain of custody, analyze those samples, and provide the results. So long as the samples don't change hands the chain of custody is unbroken, and as long as there's no evidence of foul play none is assumed. Scientists as a community trust each other. So it's not unreasonable for a group of scientists to agree to assume, in the absence of any data to the contrary, that a relatively simple sampling protocol was accomplished without undue contamination, and that hte samples were properly cared for (this amounts to "put in a zip-top plastic bag that was kept closed" in this case; hardly an onerous task, and pretty much necessary to not lose the whole sample anyway).

Basically, I do not find it necessary to adopt Jabba's irraitonal standards in this case. Even assuming the absolute best for this sample--that it was properly taken, properly cared for, and that the analysis was accurate (interesting that you're not attacking that part, since it actually is the most difficult and most prone to error)--the sample is worthless. Since the sample is worthless in this discussion, we can discard it without further consideration, including considerations of collection protocols and curation protocols.

 

[Dinwar]

I do wish to emphasize that I in no way disagree that pointing out the absurdity of accepting this sample, but rejecting the best-controlled C14 sample ever taken, is valid. I just don't think it's so critical as to warrant the type of responses you've given to those of us who chose to focus on other aspects of the sample. Your point is valid; so is mine; so is hugh's.

 

[tsig]

More than ten years ago Lucotte announced he would provide the proof that the blood found on the shroud, on the sudarium of Oviedo and on the tunic of Argenteuil has an identical DNA. We are still waiting his publication on this topic.

Beside I wonder when and how Lucotte could have got access to material coming from the shroud.

Shroud ninjas.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Here is a little idea of how Jabba represents what is going on here, to outsiders:

I’ve been on the Randi forum (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=226761&page=80) since 3/6/12 (little over 6 months). At that point, the thread I joined (about the Shroud) had garnered just 16 posts in the 2 ½ months since opening. It now has 3,192 posts, and 109,000 hits, and I’m the only one on the thread arguing for authenticity – the other 60 souls (approximately) on the thread are arguing against authenticity.
Mostly, these other guys are making foolish and insulting claims. But, some of their claims have seemed to me reasonable, and for which, I don’t have very good answers (mostly, I think, because I don’t have nearly enough time to do the necessary research)…

From here: http://shroudstory.com/2012/09/21/an-open-thread-for-rich-savage-questions/

We are all just tools for him to misuse on other forums.
Personally, I'm outta here.

Hans

 

[Dinwar]

Here is a little idea of how Jabba represents what is going on here, to outsiders:



From here: http://shroudstory.com/2012/09/21/an-open-thread-for-rich-savage-questions/

We are all just tools for him to misuse on other forums.
Personally, I'm outta here.

Hans

He accuses the whole of several branches of science of deliberate fraud and OUR claims are foolish and insulting?! That's....if it weren't so irritating it would be hillarious.

Also, I'd love to see where the 60 folks comes from. There are what, ten of us who are really active?