New "Shroud" Claims Challenged as Spurious Amherst, N.Y. June 1996

The new pro-shroud claims come from a team of four scientists from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. The team claims -- based on threads allegedly taken from the shroud -- that heavy contamination from bacteria and fungi may have altered the 1988 radiocarbon dating. The implication is that the shroud might be genuine after all. One member of the team reportedly examined the DNA of markings on the cloth and identified them as blood from a human male.

A fake shroud created by Joe Nickell

According to Nickell, the shroud first appeared in France in the 1350's, owned by a soldier of fortune who refused to say how he had obtained it. A subsequent bishop's report to Pope Clement detailed how the cloth was used in a healing scam to defraud pilgrims and how its apparent bodily imprint had been "cunningly painted" by a confessed artist.

Other evidence against authenticity, Nickell says, includes the image's resemblance to French gothic paintings as well as such obvious flaws as a lack of wraparound distortions and "blood" flows that are "picturelike" and still bright red. In 1973 the "blood" failed a battery of forensic tests conducted by internationally known experts.

By 1980 new samples had been analyzed by microanalyst Walter McCrone who discovered that both image and "blood" areas had been painted by an artist using a red ocher and vermilion tempera paint.

Finally, in 1988 samples of the shroud's linen were radiocarbon dated by three independent laboratories. Their results were in close agreement and indicated the cloth was woven between 1260 and 1390 -- consistent with the time of the forger's confession, about 1355.

The new claims of contamination imply that the shroud is much older than the fourteenth century, possibly dating even from the first century, and that it could be genuine after all.

However, according to geochemist Paul Damon, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona and one of those who conducted the 1988 radiocarbon tests, "We've dated a lot of linen -- including many Coptic Christian samples -- and have been in close agreement with the historic date, within the precision of the dating method." Damon said he is confident his original findings are correct.

The recent study by the Texas team was conducted on a linen sample allegedly taken from the lower right corner of the shroud. However, the Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini, has publicly challenged the sample's authenticity. He stated that both he and the Vatican "declare that they cannot recognize the results of the claimed experiments."

Nickell points out that, even if the sample did come from the shroud, its location was far away from any alleged "blood" stains. "This is suspicious in itself and raises serious questions," states Nickell. "The persons involved should promptly and fully clarify the source and location of all the samples allegedly removed from the shroud."

Walter McCrone, who has, he says, "examined thousands of fibers from 32 different areas of the 'Shroud,'" maintains that the fibers shown in the team's photomicrographs "did not come from the 'Shroud' of Turin."

The notion that contamination could alter the carbon date from the first to the fourteenth century is "ludicrous," McCrone says, adding: "A simple calculation shows that a weight of modern biological material necessary to raise the shroud date 1300 years would weigh twice as much as the shroud by itself."

Physicist Thomas Pickett from the University of Southern Indiana agrees, remarking that in such a case "it would be fair to say that the linen was contaminating the bacteria."

Concludes Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of the State University of New York at Buffalo and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal: "Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the so-called shroud is a medieval fake which never held a body. The new claims to the contrary reveal little more than the desperate will to believe among shroud advocates."

Related Information

• Books by Joe Nickell:
  • Inquest on the Shroud of Turin
  • Looking for a Miracle : Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures
  • Entities : Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings
  • Secrets of the Supernatural : Investigating the World's Occult Mysteries
  Other books:
  • The Blood and the Shroud : New Evidence That the World's Most Sacred Relic Is Real

• Bible verse: John 20:5–7

• Science and the Shroud (magazine of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio)

• The Skeptic's Dictionary: shroud of Turin

• The Skeptical Shroud of Turin Website

• Time Magazine: Science and the Shroud (April 1998)

• CNN: Exhibit for disputed Shroud of Turin starts Sunday (4/18/98)

• Search CSICOP: Shroud of Turin
• Search Yahoo: Shroud of Turin

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