STuRP Revisited

INCEPTION
Much of what we know about the material composition of the Shroud and its markings is derived from the investigation held between 2 and 9 October 1978 by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (originally STRP, then usually STURP, now more commonly STuRP, occasionally, and erroneously, S.T.U.R.P.). This was a loose association of between thirty and forty American scientists, mostly drawn from the military, nuclear research or state security industries, led by two young Catholic Physics teachers from the USAF Academy in Colorado and under the patronage of the Holy Shroud Guild, a group, largely of Catholic clerics, who had promoted interest in the Shroud in the United States since 1951.

That is not to say, as some prominent critics have suggested, that the whole team had a Christian bias in favour of authenticity or a miraculous origin. However, it is true that many of them had, at the very least, a pre-disposition towards authenticity, as clearly set out in the ‘Proceedings of the 1977 United States Conference of Research on the Shroud of Turin.’ The conference, in Albuquerque, was firmly under the aegis of the Holy Shroud Guild, so it is not surprising that seven of the twenty-four listed authors were Christian clerics, or that the first seven of the twenty-five papers printed in the proceedings were by clerics, all of whom believed the Shroud authentic. Furthermore, although the prime movers of the conference, John Jackson, Eric Jumper and Ken Stevenson, were not clerics, their chief motivation was the remarkable demonstration of the “3D-effect,” which had been shown them by Bill Mottern, a friend who worked at the Sandia Laboratories. They were convinced ‘scientifically’ that there was definitely a body under the cloth, so that, for them, that proposition would have to be disproved before they could change their minds.  Articles by other attendees, a year before STuRP was assembled, show that they too were firm authenticists. 

On the other hand, many of the rest of the STuRP team later assembled, especially those recruited long after the 1977 Conference, were ambivalent to or wholly ignorant of the Shroud before they got involved, and even some of the previously convinced were no doubt determined to try to maintain an open mind. In most cases the papers they wrote are technical and dispassionate, and cannot be asserted to have had any bias for or against authenticity on that evidence.

However there is no doubt that STuRP largely stemmed from the 1977 Conference, and many of its principals had been present there. Albuquerque was the home both of Sandia Laboratories and the Air Force Weapons Research establishment (where Jackson and Jumper had met), and the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a hundred miles north. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Brooks Institute of Photography were an hour’s flight away on the West Coast. Four-fifths of the STuRP team worked at, or for, these institutions. Remarkably, however, Walter McCrone, from Chicago, was also present, perhaps at the invitation of Ray Rogers, a former microscopy pupil, or simply on his own behalf, having already been interested in the Shroud for some time.

About a year later, when the prospect of being allowed hands-on access to the Shroud was becoming increasingly likely, two people from Connecticut became involved, apparently quite independently, although the fact that they were from the same state, and the only state outside the original south western triangle to get involved, does strike me as too coincidental to be… coincidental. They were Thomas d’Muhala, who was an inventor and business manager, and John Heller, a doctor. Probably d’Muhala brought in Roger and Marty Gilbert, whose Oriel Corporation made scientific instruments, and long after the trip to Turin in October 1978, Heller brought in Alan Adler, a fellow porphyrin specialist, from Western Connecticut University.

So although many of the STuRP team had been recruited via the 1977 Conference, others were invited on the basis of their technical expertise, irrespective of religion. In his book, ‘Report on the Shroud of Turin,‘ John Heller quotes “six agnostics, two Mormons, three Jews, four Catholics and all the rest Protestants,” but it is probably true that many of them, whatever they were born into, were not fully practising, and that most of them had scarcely heard of the Shroud and had no opinions about it at all. 

The word ‘scientist’ suffers from such a breadth of definition that it may be wise to place it in quotes. The scientists of the STuRP team ranged from men at the very top of their field, both by qualification and experience, to people who, however valuable practically, and however well qualified, acted as little more than gofers during the trip to Turin. The scientific papers that gave STuRP its lasting credibility were written by a dozen or so experienced and practising laboratory researchers, mostly with PhDs, published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, and are a priori no less respectable than any other paper, although, as we shall see, some were indeed affected by pre-convictions of authenticity, and even, as we shall see, personal animosity towards dissenters.

An intense period of preparation followed, planning the tests, acquiring the equipment and financing the expedition. D’Muhala was particularly valuable in creating the rotating table on which the Shroud was to be mounted, and in sourcing finance, and it was he who formally incorporated the Shroud of Turin Research Project company on 14 July 1978. The Gilberts brought their own newly invented UV spectroscopy equipment. A detailed schedule was drawn up, continuously modified (especially with the aid of a dry run of the experiments on a mock-up, carried out in Amston, Connecticut), and only achieved its final form after the team had left for Turin.

This final schedule, now published by Barrie Schwortz at shroud.com, is entitled:  ‘Operations Test Plan for Investigating the Shroud of Turin by Electromagnetic Radiation at Various Wavelengths,’ and dates from the end of September 1978, after “the scientific team departed for Turin.” It is a typical masterpiece of military precision planning, which like any pre-operations document seen in retrospect, does not entirely match up to what eventually transpired. The schedule of experiments begins with an unnecessarily complicated co-ordinate identification grid, dividing the Shroud into 20cm squares, labeled A to F across and 1 to 20 longitudinally, the origin being the “lower left hand corner as one normally looks at the Shroud mounted in the test frame.”  This was the ventral feet side, opposite the side strip. Unfortunately, in Turin it was unrolled the other way round, and the origin ended up in the top right. In Turin the new ‘origin’ was used (dorsal feet side, on the side strip) for magnetic markers placed accordingly, but hardly anybody used it.

The co-ordinate diagram is followed by a series of forty “Predetermined Examination Points,” identified on a photo of the Shroud by another over-complicated and confusing series of labels, and no reference at all to the grid. This was a pity, as a grid would have enabled centimetre precision, without which John Heller had difficulty precisely identifying the type of debris he was examining when he studied the sticky-tape samples months later. Fortunately the placing of magnetic markers and the detailed documenting photography by Barrie Schwortz have enabled reasonably accurate reconstruction. In the event several of the predetermined points, especially the ones on or near the face, were not, apparently, examined. A second series of points, “requested from the visible spectra equipment” were also not, in fact, used at all.

There follows a set of seven “Test Plans”, beginning, very sensibly, with the Electronic Maintenance Team, whose contribution was crucial to the success of all the others, although naturally they did not write scientific papers about their job! This plan was followed by Photography, X-Radiography, X-Ray Fluorescence, Infrared, Tape Experiment, and Ultra-Violet – Visible Spectroscopy.

INVESTIGATIONS
1) Photography. The Photography Plan was headed by Don Devan and included some very highly qualified people, including Don Lynn and Jean Lorre, who worked on the Mariner, Viking and Galileo NASA space missions, and Ernie Brooks, the founder of the Brooks Institute of Photography. Much of the plan was devoted to the capture of two series of black-and-white images, of one foot square and four foot square areas, each taken three times through different colour filters. Sadly almost nothing came of any of this, and almost nothing has been published apart from the four so-called ‘quad mosaic’ images, each of a four foot square area, consisting of the three filtered images of each area artificially coloured and overlaid. The images are unhelpful and misleading, and have lead to completely unjustified conclusions regarding the chemical makeup of the cloth and its deposits.

Another part of the Photography Plan was for UV-Fluorescence photography, which was very capably carried out by Vernon Miller and Sam Pellicori, who published their results in the Journal of Biological Photography in 1981. Sam Pellicori also undertook spectrographic analysis of numerous areas on the Shroud, which he reported on in Applied Optics in 1980. It is apparent that Pellicori was one of the team already convinced that the Shroud was genuine, and although his data is as impartial as it could be, his discussion and conclusions are not similarly objective.

Other very useful, for subsequent research, sections of this Plan were Mark Evans’s photomicrographs of various tiny areas, and Barrie Schwortz’s huge overall photos using both reflected and transmitted light. Finally a plan to make stereoscopic images using two cameras a little distance apart pointing at the same place was not, to my knowledge, carried out at all. Certainly nobody reported on it.

2) X-Radiography. The X-Radiography Plan was coordinated by Bill Mottern, assisted by Ronald London and Roger Morris. In spite of its intrinsic hazards and the very long exposure times, this was very accurately carried out and later reported in Materials Examination in 1979.

3) X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrography. The same team (with Roger Morris as co-ordinator this time) also carried out X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrography, although not to the extent specified in the Plan. This was reported in X-Ray Spectrometry in 1980.

4) Infrared. Joseph Accetta and Stephen Baumgart carried out the Infrared Plan as best they could, and wrote it up in Applied Optics in 1980, but it was not very satisfactory and revealed little of interest.

5) Tape Experiment. Next on the plan was the Tape Experiment, which was carried out by Ray Rogers and Robert Dinegar, and ultimately written up by John Heller and Alan Adler in Applied Optics in 1980, and more fully in the Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal, in 1981, and simultaneously by Walter McCrone in three papers for The Microscope. The very different conclusions arrived at by the two sets of researchers is explored below.

6) Ultra-Violet – Visible Spectroscopy. Finally, Roger and Marty Gilbert, whose Oriel Corporation manufactured scientific instruments, brought their own to carry out spectrographic investigations of their own. Their work is a model of scientific method, both in execution and reporting, which could have complemented that of Sam Pellicori and Roger Morris had they all been better co-ordinated. Their work was also published in Applied Optics in 1980.

Thus it is that pages 1909 to 1936 of Applied Optics, Vol 19, No 12 (June 1980), contain four successive papers of the STuRP exploration of the Shroud, although the first is really only an introduction to the other three, and the second is an overview and further analysis of the third. A fifth paper was published in August.

APPLIED OPTICS, VOL 19
In March 1979, a preliminary assessment of the findings so far was held in Santa Barbara, and Walter McCrone presented his discovery that the Shroud contained relatively large quantities of iron oxide powder. At the time, and by the time Applied Optics was published, the only samples examined by Heller and Adler consisted of seven coated fibres (from a “nonimage” tape), and a single loose “brownish red translucent crystal.” McCrone’s presentation seems disproportionately to have antagonised some of the rest of the team, whose own, subsequent, papers give a strong impression of data being forced to fit preconceptions. This will be examined below.

1) Scientific Investigation of the Shroud of Turin. The introductory paper was authored by Eric Jumper and, perhaps surprisingly, not John Jackson but Robert W. (Bill) Mottern. Jumper and Jackson were very much the leaders of the team, with, perhaps, Jackson as the primus inter pares. It may be that as they were both teachers at the USAF Academy, someone from a different institution, albeit also involved in military security (Sandia Laboratories) would better illustrate the breadth of involvement in the investigation. The paper reviews the tests carried out by STuRP. As many of them were still being analysed, the authors did not know which would bear fruit, and list several of which details have never in fact been published. They mention Optical Spectroscopy, Infrared Spectroscopy and Thermography (papers on which subjects followed in the same journal), and then list:
A. “X-Ray Fluorescence.” Taken from a number of 1cm² spots around the face and feet. This work was later published as ‘X-Ray Fluorescence Investigation of the Shroud of Turin’ in X-Ray Spectrometry.
B. “X-Radiography.” A full X-ray of the entire cloth. Already published as ‘Radiographic Examination of the Shroud of Turin – A Preliminary Report’ in Materials Evaluation.
C. “Photography.”
a. “Mosaics at 5.6:1 and 22:1 reduction were made of the entire surface of the cloth. For each section a successive series of exposures were made with red, green, and blue filters for color separation.” I think this refers to the “Quad Mosaics,” of which four images are all that have been published, each covering about 1m², and composed of false colour re-combinations of the three filters. If other images resulted from this investigation, or other work done on their analysis, it has never been released.
b. UV Fluorescence. A full UV fluorescence photo of the entire cloth. Later published as ‘Ultraviolet Fluorescence Photography of the Shroud of Turin’ in the Journal of Biological Photography.
c. “For another series the visible spectrum was partitioned into 100Å intervals by a series of filters.” I know nothing about this set of images at all.
[I think the authors might have mentioned here the full length reflectance and transmission photographs taken by Barrie Schwortz, and the numerous micrographs taken by Mark Evans.]
D. “Chemical Analysis. Trace samples of surface materials were obtained by means of adhesive tape. The tape and the adhesive were compounded of pure hydrocarbon. A specially designed roller was used to apply the adhesive to selected areas of the linen cloth. After being carefully removed the tapes were attached, with the adhesive side up, to microscope slides and identified. All slides were stored in a plastic box that was tightly sealed.” This is incorrect. The tapes were placed sticky side down across shallow rectangular glass trays, adhering only to the walls of the trays by their ends, before a lid was sealed on. The planning, placing, studying and reporting of this part of the STuRP operation stimulated half a dozen papers, a book, and a controversy which has never been thoroughly addressed nor satisfactorily resolved. It will be examined in detail below.
E. “Additional Tests. Additional tests not noted here were performed on an opportunity basis that included transmission photographs, side-lit photographs, and glancing photographs.” It is often said that thousands of photographs of various kinds were taken, of which only a very small proportion have been published.

2) Spectral Properties of the Shroud of Turin. The next paper in Applied Optics was by Sam Pellicori, of the Santa Barbara Research Center. Interestingly, Pellicori carried out very similar experiments to the Gilberts, taking spectral measurements from six examples of four well-defined characteristic areas: clean, image, blood and scorch. His range of wavelengths was quite small, and in general shows that just about everywhere on the Shroud reflects more red and yellow light than green and blue, which is fairly obvious to the naked eye. Across the range, most of the spectra show a slightly sigmoid curve, being more or less level (equally absorbent) across shorter wavelengths, (below about 500nm), more or less level (equally reflective) across longer wavelengths (above about 650nm), and showing a gradient between the two. The parameters of each wavelength determine its general colour; basically the steeper the gradient the redder the colour.

Unfortunately this paper suffers from an emphasis on discrediting the hypothesis that the Shroud contains iron oxide (Fe₂O₃) particles, and an implicit preconviction that the Shroud is authentic is apparent. An early statement (“The observations eliminate the possibility that the body image is due to pigments or dyes applied to the linen”) directs the line of discussion, and the failure of a laboratory-created comparative series of Fe₂O₃ “smudges” of different concentrations to correlate to observations on the Shroud is considered better evidence that the Shroud observations were wrong than that the laboratory prepared iron oxide was a different colour from that on the Shroud. Fe₂O₃ has rather a variable colour depending on temperature and humidity, and the fact that two samples are different does not demonstrate that one of them is not iron oxide at all.

In a determined attempt to demonstrate blood on the Shroud, Pellicori publishes a series of spectra of laboratory-prepared blood compared to the spectrum from the Shroud measured by the Gilberts, and comes to the extraordinary conclusion that, “The bloodstained areas have the spectral characteristics of human hemoglobin.” It is evident that this part of the paper was strongly biased towards discrediting Walter McCrone, regardless of the more obvious implications of the data. The diagram below will show why.

The diagram above is derived from Figure 4 of Pellicori’s paper, showing various reflectance (R) and one transmission (T) spectrum. The three most relevant have been emphasised, and significant features labelled (a) – (f). Another spectrum, of Fe₂O₃, from Figure 6, is included, and will be discussed below.
(a) is the ‘Soret band,’ typical, and diagnostic of, blood chemicals. It is entirely missing in the Shroud sample. Pellicori dismisses the Gilberts’ failure to find it as poor signal to noise ratio.
(b) is a prominent ‘bump’ in all blood spectra. It is entirely missing in the Shroud sample.
(c) shows a marked transition in the Shroud spectrum. It is entirely missing in the blood samples.
(d) shows a marked transition in the blood spectra. It is entirely missing in the Shroud sample.
(e) shows another marked transition in the blood spectra (from steeper to flatter). It is matched by a transition in the opposite direction (from flatter to steeper) in the Shroud sample.
(f) shows a prominent bump in the Shroud spectrum. It is entirely missing in the blood samples.

Thus Pellicori’s own diagram clearly demonstrates that, contrary to his assertion, the bloodstained areas measured most certainly do not have “the spectral characteristics of hemoglobin.”

In his Figure 6, Pellicori includes the spectrum of Fe₂O₃ with others derived from the Shroud, but not those of bloodstains, or even image. He shows clearly that plain, clean linen does not look like iron oxide, which is not very surprising. Had he included his Fe₂O₃ spectrum in Figure 4 (as illustrated above), its similarity to the Shroud bloodstains would have been very apparent, although it lacks the prominent ‘bump’ at about 615nm which is a diagnostic feature of Shroud blood spectra. He even agrees that “Fe₂O3 has a spectrum resembling that of blood,” without observing that it’s spectrum resembles Shroud ‘blood’ much better than it resembles the real thing.

3) Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy and Thermographic Investigations of the Shroud of Turin. This paper was by Joseph Accetta (Lockheed Missiles and Space Co.) and J. Stephen Baumgart (EG&G Corporation), although at the time they were both working with the USAF Weapons Laboratory at Albuquerque. Although the results of the measurements taken in Turin are detailed and comprehensive, the authors find them too imprecise to be able to arrive at many definitive conclusions. Almost the only one, based on control experiments of their own, is: “Shroud blood comparisons with known bloodstains show marked differences.” Like Pellicori, in the previous paper, Accetta and Baumgart made a laboratory control of their own, in this case using blood rather than iron oxide, and found, like Pellicori, that the experiment did not match the Shroud.

4) Ultraviolet-Visible Reflectance and Fluorescence Spectra of the Shroud of Turin. This was Roger and Marty Gilbert’s experiment, using instruments they had made themselves. They took several spectra of plain, image, blood and scorch areas of the Shroud, and found that within each category, the spectra were very similar, but that the four different areas were different from each other except that scorch and image areas were almost identical, as the diagram below shows. Their tests and their paper were elegant examples of good scientific method, the implications of which have already been noticed above, and will be discussed further below.

The diagram above is based on the Gilberts’ Figure 6 (Mean clear area – this is an ‘absolute’ spectrum), Figure 8 (Mean Scorch and Image areas – relative to the clear area), and Figure 14 (Mean Bloodstain area – relative to the clear area), distributed over the y-axis to better compare the shapes of each spectrum. The blood spectrum, specifically, is controversial.

5) Blood on the Shroud of Turin. After these spectral analyses, derived from areas of around 1cm², the next paper in Applied Optics, published in August, looked at microscopic specks of ‘bloodstain’ derived from the sticky-tape samples. John Heller and Alan Adler, both of the New England Institute, Connecticut, based their observations and conclusions on a single sticky-tape sample “from one of the blood areas” received from Walter McCrone, which  they describe thus: “A l000X dry microscopic examination showed several hundred linen fibrils, assorted debris of the centuries (e.g., a crimson silk fiber, an azure wool fiber), less than a dozen possible bloodstained fibrils, and a single brownish red translucent crystal. The stains appeared as a surface sheath on some of the fibrils as well as seeming to penetrate them.” However in his book, ‘Report on the Shroud of Turin,‘ Heller is at pains to describe how these ‘blood’ fibrils were actually found on a tape labelled “nonimage.”

In an attempt, it seems, simply and solely to discredit McCrone’s observations, Heller and Adler come up with a number of highly questionable conclusions, which can clearly be seen not to concur with the data they publish. They begin with a comparison of an absorption spectrum they recorded from the minute “translucent crystal” with the Gilberts’ reflectance spectrum of the blood areas, appropriately converted, via a ‘Kulbelka-Monk’ algorithm, to its absorbance equivalent. Broadly speaking, light is either reflected or absorbed, so the spectrum of the one is the inverse of the other. Here is their diagram, Figure 2 of their paper (note the two different scales of absorbance – if the Gilberts’ spectrum was drawn at the same scale as Heller and Adler’s it would appear almost flat):

Of Spectrum A, from their blood fibrils, Heller and Adler write that it shows “intense Soret absorption (400-450 nm) indicative of a regular porphyritic material.” This is not what it shows, and Heller and Adler knew that very well. Their references for their assertion, Martin Gouterman and Fran Adar, (in The Porphyrins, Volume 3, ed. David Dolphin) show several diagrams of porphyrin spectra, showing the Soret peak – a sharp spike is a more accurate description – which rises sharply from a baseline at around 380nm, and descends back to the line at about 430nm. It is so intense that in order to include other parts of the spectrum meaningfully in the same graph, it must be truncated or given an absorbance scale of its own. Here is a generalised example, (Figure 6 of ‘Absorption and Fluorescence Spectroscopy of Tetraphenylporphyrin and Metallo-Tetraphenylporphyrin’ at www1/lasalle.edu/~prushan/Abs%20and%20Fluor%20of%20TPPH2.pdf):

It looks nothing whatever like the rounded hump displayed by the Shroud spectrum. Heller and Adler then say that Spectrum B, from the Gilberts’ paper, shows “more clearly the visible bands and shapes indicative of high spin iron porphyrin spectra.” This too, is untrue. Their references for this include the opening chapters of The Porphyrins, Volume 3, edited by David Dolphin, but written by Martin Gouterman and Fran Adar. Here is Adar’s diagram of several porphyrin spectra, including “high spin” :

Any attempt to superimpose the Shroud spectra onto these is clearly futile. Another reference is to ‘Hematin Compounds and Bile Pigments’ by R. Lemberg and J. W. Legge. Here is their diagram of the spectra of various heme compounds. Note that their wavelength scale runs from larger to smaller and their absorption scale is logarithmic.

Finally, Heller and Adler’s last reference for their porphyrin hypothesis is ‘Factors Influencing the Absorption Spectrum of Vertebrate Hemoglobin in Solution,’ by Bruce Cameron and Philip George. This is their diagram (note the exponential x-axis):

Once again this bears no relation to Heller and Alder’s alleged ‘blood’ spectrum, although it could be said that the minor peak at about 620 nm does compare with the Gilberts’ spectrum at the same wavelength.

:All in all, the spectra to which Heller and Adler specifically compared theirs are significantly different in many respects. They concluded this section with: “In our opinion the spectral data taken in aggregate are positive in confirming the presence of perturbed acid met-hemoglobin species on the Shroud.” In my opinion they do no such thing, and render suspect much of their subsequent investigation. In particular their data show no sign of the Soret peak, nor of the characteristic double hump around 550nm, which if anything, are the diagnostic characteristics of what they claim to have found.

PRIMARY RESEARCH CONCLUDED
In 1981 three more pieces of primary research appeared, in different journals. One wonders why they did not appear in Applied Optics, like the others. As an alternative, X-Ray Spectrometry is entirely appropriate, but Biological Photography and the Canadian Forensic Science Journal are rather remotely connected; surely they were not the authors’ first choice of publication. Finally a summary paper appeared in Analytica Chimica Acta, which again is a rather curious choice. It must also be said that the same time Walter McCrone published three papers in rapid succession in his own journal The Microscope, and years later, accused of lack of peer-review, another in Accounts of Chemical Research, followed later still by a book.

1) X-Ray Fluorescence Investigation of the Shroud of Turin. (X-Ray Spectrometry, Vol 9, No 2) Roger Morris, Larry Schwalbe and J. Ronald London analysed the elemental content of twenty-three spots on the Shroud, broadly in two areas, around the head and around the foot (dorsal image), and identified especially calcium, iron and strontium. Within the constraints of their equipment, the authors were able almost to exclude rubidium, yttrium and zirconium (upper limit 0.5µg/cm², and to place upper limits on lead (15µg/cm²), copper (5µg/cm²) and arsenic (5µg/cm²), but silver, cadmium, and tin were not distinguishable. Potassium, Manganese, Cobalt, Nickel and Zinc are not even mentioned, although as occasional contaminants of ochre, their quantities and distribution would have been useful data, The calcium averaged 200µg/cm² with a 15% deviation, and the strontium 2µg/cm²) with a 30% deviation; they appear to be fairly evenly distributed across the cloth. The iron concentration, however, varies from about 7µg/cm² to about 60µg/cm², and seems related to the discolouration of the cloth, particularly high in ‘blood’ areas (≈60µg/cm²), quite high in ‘waterstain’ areas (≈30µg/cm²), and low in other areas (≈15µg/cm²), although there it correlates quite well with image intensity. Here is a diagram of the data:

Significantly, as this is a problem which dogs all the “spot” investigations by the STuRP team, there is only a single control measurement taken from an unmarked area of the cloth (in this case out to the side of the face – Spot 19). It indicates a background iron content of about 7µg/cm², which may, if this area is typical of the rest of the cloth, be representative of environmental conditions such as methods of preparation of the cloth as a whole, or contamination such as dust.

‘Blood’ spots showed about seven times as much iron as background, ‘water stain’ spots about four times as much, and ‘image’ spots about twice as much. The ‘blood’ iron is unremarkable: hemoglobin contains iron. The ‘water stain’ iron is noteworthy, and suggests that the water responsible contained iron salts. It may be remarkable that the iron content decreases towards the margins of the stain, since the margins are both easily visible to the eye and semi-opaque to X-rays, but this area of the Shroud is rather confused and until better characterised, these findings must remain unexplained. John Heller and Alan Adler found that the water stain margins themselves were particularly rich in iron, but they were not sampled in this investigation.

The iron content across the face does seem to match the intensity of the image, suggesting a relationship between the two. Specific image intensity data has not been published, but can be visualised by taking a thin strip of the Shroud in the same area as the sample points and converting it into pseudo-relief using software such as ImageJ. Here is the comparison:

I believe there is a prima facie case for consideration that the image may be iron-content related. Morris et al considered this, and made some comparisons with known densities of iron oxide on cloth, but decided their data were insufficiently precise to draw clear conclusions. Other writers referencing this paper have generally ignored the possibility, or pointed out that the error on each measurement was too large for a positive correlation to be conclusively established.

2) Ultraviolet Fluorescence Photography of the Shroud of Turin. (Journal of Biological Photography, Vol 49, No 3) Vernon Miller and Sam Pellicori photographed the UV fluorescence of the Shroud, noting areas, particularly around ‘blood’ stains, where it was particularly bright. Unfortunately the Holland backing cloth seems to have fluoresced brightly, which was detected through the Shroud itself, interfering with some observations.

3) A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin. (Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal, Vol 14, No 3) At last we arrive at John Heller and Alan Adler’s monumental A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin, based on the twenty-two sticky-tape slides they had been given to analyse. Much of the controversy arising from this paper derives from the way the samples were achieved, how they were taken and where from. Important aspects of this have never been clearly reported, but it is clear that the original protocol was not adhered to, that the tape itself did not meet its promoted specifications, and that John Heller was openly critical of Ray Rogers, to such an extent that Rogers more or less withdrew from further participation and published no research of his own. 

The STuRP team returned to the USA halfway through October 1978. According to Walter McCrone, he flew from Chicago to New Mexico halfway through December, to deliver a course on microscopy, and collected 32 of the slides from Rogers then. According to Shroud History on shroud.com Rogers delivered them to McCrone on his way back from Turin. According to Heller, Rogers said to him in November that “McCrone dropped by shortly after I returned.” This kind of inconsistency is unhelpful. Whatever happened, nothing was done to the samples for two months, even though Heller was ready and waiting to examine them.

McCrone, even then considered one of the world’s foremost microscopists, began his study of the tapes on Christmas Day 1978, and was able to report his findings to the STuRP conference in Santa Barbara on 25 March 1979. Meanwhile according to Heller, McCrone sent him four samples, sometime “after the start of the new year,” from which he had managed to extract seven red-coated fibrils, but not identified them. At the conference, according to Heller, Roger Morris claimed that he had found calcium and strontium “evenly spread all over the linen,” and iron, “spread uniformly over the whole Shroud except in the bloodstained areas.” This is untrue. Morris’s paper gives a standard deviation from the mean of 15% (calcium), 30% ‘(strontium) and 54% (iron, even without the ‘blood’ areas). A standard deviation of over half the mean cannot possibly be construed as uniformity. 

Although there was no evidence at the time that McCrone was wrong, Heller’s book suggests that he was condemned as soon as he mentioned his observations that the image fibres were covered in iron oxide. McCrone mentions “large wooden crosses around the necks of some of the STURP officers,” which could certainly have included John Jackson, who wore such a cross in Turin, and Robert Dinegar, an episcopal priest as well as a nuclear weapons physicist. From that moment on, it is clear that for this aspect of the investigation, a dominant motivating force for both parties, Heller and McCrone, was to simply to prove each other wrong, to the detriment of consideration of the other’s point of view. McCrone redoubled his examination, but Heller and Adler were unable to start work for another year, when Jackson, Jumper and Rogers went up to Chicago to retrieve the slides.  Even this aspect of the sticky-tape study is confusing. McCrone says that after he received the tapes he cut them all in two and sent one set of half-tapes back to Rogers. He says he gave up his set in late Spring 1980 on the understanding that he would then get a chance to study the other one. It appears, however, that Heller and Adler were completely unaware of this arrangement, so could not use Rogers’s ‘spare set’ although mysteriously a few of the tapes they examined were not among those reclaimed from McCrone.

The confusing and slightly sorry saga of the tapes, coupled to the personal antagonism of those involved in their study, does not enable the impartial student to come to very firm conclusions. The sticky tape, specially designed not to leave residue, was not optically inert, as claimed, and so glutinous as to necessitate intensive cleaning methods to remove it from extracted fibres. It was, out of respect to the possible fragility of the cloth, applied with such small pressure that only surface debris was removed, and very little extracted from out of the weave of the cloth. Furthermore the selection of sites from which to take samples was peculiarly random and lacking in sufficient control. Below is a selection of plans of the sample areas, perhaps the most accurate being the middle one, based on photos taken of the sample sites, marked with little magnets, more or less as the samples were taken.

There is much to be learnt from these plans. Yellow ovals show where sample sites originally planned were not, in the end, sampled; and sample sites that were sampled although not in the original plan. Squares on the middle plan (ventral) are sites were planned, and sampled (judging by their code names on the slides), but are not on Barrie Schwortz’s record. 1H “patch” was one of Heller’s tapes which does not correspond to anything planned, observed or mentioned by McCrone. “4 ?” shows that McCrone’s 4 is different from Heller and Adler’s 4. His is simply identified as “Control”, while theirs is “Backing cloth, exposed on front corner.” On the dorsal plans, Heller and Adler’s “4C” is described by them as “Scourge blood image, middle back,” but McCrone’s “4C” is described as “Scorch at top left shoulder,” which matches the original plan better.

Among the most important samples should have been controls; sites of more or less pristine linen, away from image, blood, scorch and water stain. Whatever debris was found on them, if more or less evenly distributed across several controls from several sites, would represent incidental or adventitious material, which could be ‘subtracted’ from the material found in other sites, leaving material specific to those areas. The original test plan shows six or seven, rather inequitably distributed: one on either side of the face, one level with the ventral waist, one close to the fingers, two level with the (dorsal) buttocks, and perhaps one or two between the two head images, although there is a big water stain there. Schwortz’s diagram lists seven, in different places: one near the fingers, one below the lance wound, one outside the ventral waist, one between the heads and three beside the dorsal legs. Rather to our surprise, Heller and Adler only looked at one: taken between the extended fingers of the right hand and the adjacent burn mark. Of course, they could only look at what they were given, but scientifically, this is inexcusable. We have already seen that, according to Heller, a slide labelled “non-image” was found to contain several ‘blood’ fibres.

According to both Heller and Adler and McCrone, each sticky tape was covered in hundreds of fibres and particles, including (a combined list) insect parts, pollen, plant hairs, fungal spores, silk, cotton and linen, animal hair and feather fibrils, modern synthetic fibres, wax, fly-ash, paint fragments, wax, modern synthetic fibres, paper fibres, mica, limestone and quartz, felt-tipped pen ink, and starch. However, McCrone notes that on just over half the slides he studied, there were also small sub-micron orange-red particles which outnumbered all the other debris by “at least 1,000:1.” Furthermore he claims that after a more or less ‘blind’ examination, he was able to classify all the slides with red-orange particles as ‘image’ or ‘blood.’ These particles are difficult to see at X100 magnification, but obvious at X400. A comment by Schwalbe and Rogers (see below) that no such particles could be seen at X50 is hardly relevant.

Heller and Adler did not quantify what they observed, but divided their observations into different coloured fibres, and three classes of particle – shards, globs (orange and brown), and black particulates (which were fragments of char). None of these represents the submicron particles observed by McCrone. However among the fibres they noted “red coated fibers,” whose “coating varies from smooth to fractured to particulate appearance, color varies from red to orange, coating not birefringent or pleochroic,” but only on tapes from ‘blood’ areas. The essence of their analysis of all the red particles is that birefringent ones are iron oxide, while non-birefringent ones are blood derivatives. The birefringent particles are found only associated with scorches and water stain margins; the non-birefringent ones are found only associated with blood areas.

That sounds clear enough, until we read, a bit further on, “the uncoated fibrils (non-image, image, and water stain) all give relatively strong positive tests only for Ca and Fe, except for those from the inside of the water stains which give somewhat weaker but still definite positive reactions. Thus we find no evidence for any other metallic species on the body image fibers at a level that would provide colour evident to the eye.” This is an apparent contradiction to what was previously asserted, but it is explained that this iron is found in a “cellulose bound chelated form” i.e. not particulate. It is later explained that “a great deal of cellulosic bound iron” is found “ubiquitously and more or less uniformly over the whole Shroud.” However considering they only had a single “non-image” tape (on which, as we have seen, they found ‘blood’ coated fibres), and only two ‘image’ tapes not associated with blood or water stains, it is a moot question as to how they established ubiquity and uniformity.

One way out of the confusion may be to examine the sticky tape slides for ourselves. Fortunately, Eugenia Nitowski was given access to several, and took numerous micrographs of their contents, although, as she freely admits, her photos were not representative of the entire slides, rather than of areas she found particularly interesting. Among her collection are two ‘non-image’ tapes, from near the tips of the fingers, and over the stomach. Since the latter is within the body outline, here are some photos of the former.

The first is at x100, and shows how covered in particles the entire field of all the tapes actually was, although many of them are too tiny even for McCrone to resolve. The second two are at x400, and show fibres thick with particles. Compare the selection of fibres from this, pristine area of unmarked, unaffected cloth, and the selection below, from tape pressed against the dense blood of the wound on the back of the hand.

Although these particular images were chosen to illustrate the point, it is true that a similar selection could be made from almost any of the sticky tape slides collected by Rogers and Dinegar. In order to determine whether particular areas of the Shroud differ in terms of their surface debris or fibril attachment or decomposition, a qualitative analysis should be made, preferably ‘blind.’ McCrone claimed that he had done this, classifying each tape into two classes, ‘blood and/or image’ and ‘neither image nor blood,’ entirely on the basis of its iron oxide content, and got 28 of his 32 samples correct. Heller and Adler do not describe their method very clearly, but there is no suggestion that they carried out any examination of a slide without knowing where it came from. They say, “we have arbitrarily set a minimum threshold of 15 specimens of a particular set of characteristics to constitute a class of fibrils and particles typical of a specific location on the cloth,” but this is not altogether an adequate description. All the tapes contain many hundreds of “pale yellow” fibrils, so discovering 15 on any particular tape would not be diagnostic that that tape was from a “non-image area.” As mentioned before, Heller found seven “red coated fibrils” on a “non-image tape.” I doubt very much that finding 15 such fibrils would enable one to classify any tape definitively as a “blood area.”

What all this boils down to is that Heller and Adler found what they were looking for. ‘Body image’ areas had 15 or more “yellow fibrils,” “blood areas” had 15 or more “red coated fibrils” and so on. Having decided that all the iron oxide on the cloth was either mineralised blood or adventitious with the water-stains, they only looked for 15 fibres carrying particles in those places, ignoring any they observed elsewhere. Here is a selection of Nitowski’s micrographs of a sample from the back of the neck, a pure ‘image’ area, which Heller and Adler did not get the opportunity to examine:

In his book, Heller makes the following extraordinary statement: “That morning Jumper announced that he had been looking at slides and that in at least a third of the image fibrils there were no red particles at all.” This is grotesque. Since the image fibres were defined as “yellow fibres” and not “red coated fibrils,” then he should have found no red particles on the image fibres at all. If he was looking at whole slides from image areas – of which, it must be remembered, they only had two – then it is no surprise at all that most of the fibres were unmarked. Most of the fibres from all over the Shroud, including the blood stains, are unmarked. This is obvious from the most cursory look through the micrographs of the tapes taken by Eugenia Nitowski.

Heller and Adler went on to compound their idiosyncrasy. In order to carry out chemical tests on the fibres and particles, they removed them from the tape and then washed away the sticky residue still adhering to them. According to Heller, this wasn’t easy. “That thrice-damned adhesive was incredibly sticky. If one pulled a fiber off the surface with a forceps the stickum would stretch out about a centimetre (half an inch) before it would snap in two – one half ricocheting back to the tape, and the other half going with the fibre forming an instant ball of adhesive around it. Trying to pull the fiber out of the goop and away from the forceps was like trying to throw flypaper away with bare hands. It didn’t work. The stickum had to be dissolved with a solvent.” In their paper in Applied Optics, Heller and Adler describe this process: “To prepare a specimen for testing, the portion of tape containing it was excised by scalpel from the sample. It was then washed free of the tweezer-held tape with toluene into a spot plate well. The adhesive was then removed by repeated washings with toluene. The wash toluene was removed by micropipet or by sorption into small pointed strips of filter paper while the specimen was held in place with a glass needle.”

It can only be described as bizarre that in order to investigate the possibility of particulate matter on a flax fiber, it should first be treated to “repeated washings with toluene,” but this may explain why, after literally thousands of tests, almost nothing was found on any of the Shroud fibres. Particles big enough to be recognised independently were classified on the basis of their refraction, as explained above: iron oxide – assumed to be entirely from scorches and water stain margins – and blood derivatives, assumed to be entirely from blood marks.

Unfortunately, neither party made much attempt to understand the other, and their published references to each other are little more than disguised abuse. In denying that there is any blood on the Shroud at all, McCrone ignores the tests carried out by Heller and Adler indicative of, at the very least, blood derivatives. They found that the bigger red particles, described as globs and shards, dissolved in hydrazine, which is a feature of organic compounds but not of Fe₂O₃, which does suggest that not all the particles or agglomerates observed by McCrone were iron oxide. However in denying the copious and widespread sub-micron particles, Heller and Adler ignore what can be observed by anybody on published micrographs. All in all the chemical study of the Shroud is inconclusive and contentious.

THE SUMMARY
The few papers mentioned or discussed above constitute all the primary research conducted by STuRP in 1978. They took photographs, made spectrographic measurements, and collected surface debris. This resulted in much useful data that might have been used to answer questions, but perhaps one of the problems with any overall assessment of their work is that exactly what questions they set out to answer were never sufficiently enumerated at the time. If they had been, then rather more directed, and certainly more co-ordinated, examinations would, perhaps, have produced more definitive results. In 1982, in Analytica Chimica Acta (Vol 135), a rather curious choice of journal, Lawrence Schwalbe and Ray Rogers published what might be considered the final report of STuRP’s activities in 1978. Schwalbe had been part of Roger Morris’s X-ray fluorescence team, and had co-authored their paper in Applied Optics, while Rogers, after handing over the microscopical investigation, had taken no further part in it. How, or whether, these two were chosen as spokespeople for the team remains a mystery. The paper, ‘Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: A Summary of the 1978 Investigation,’ is a commendable attempt to make sense of all that had been recorded about the Shroud, including evidence from the 1973 Italian Commission and experiments on photos of the Shroud before STuRP was formed, up to 1982, and although it relies too heavily on the less than impartial conclusions of Heller and Adler, McCrone’s observations are reported in some detail. Nevertheless rather poor attempts to discredit them, coupled to some curious inaccuracies regarding the nature of flax, plant this summary firmly in the “not a painting” camp. On the other hand a particular feature of this paper is a frank admittance that little definitive can be said about the way the image was formed without a better knowledge of the date. This is in interesting contrast to the often repeated insistence that there was overwhelming evidence of authenticity before the radiocarbon test of 1988.

The summary also presents us, almost for the first time, with a formal purpose of the STuRP expedition. “The primary goal of the 1978 investigation was to apply a series of nondestructive tests to determine the physical and chemical characteristics of the image more exactly,” and “one of the goals of the 1978 investigation was to characterize the ‘blood’ areas. Had either of these aims been clear when the original STuRP investigation began, the X-ray fluorescence and the tape sampling tests could have been much better planned. Only the Gilberts seem to have realised the importance of controls, of clearly differentiated areas of interest, and of multiple instances of each. They sampled the following:
a) Clear Areas. These are designated F(Front)4, F3B, F8G, F6D, B(Back)1F. They are clearly marked on a location plan in their paper, and although obviously related, do not fully correspond with any of the plans shown above. Barrie Schwortz did not record any of them.
b) Image Areas. Designated F3A, F8F, F8E, B1D, B1E, B6A, B6A₁.
c) Scorch Areas. Designated F3C, F3D, F8H, B1C, B3E, B3E₁.
d) Blood Areas. Designated F3E, F6B, F8C, B1A, B3C.

Here is the Gilberts’ plan, with Heller and Adler’s designations in pink. It is a pity that only five of the sites coincided.

The failure to co-ordinate the sites, and the failure to characterise quantitively those few that were tape-sampled, and the fact that the spectrographic studies of Morris, London and Schwalbe also did not coincide, is a serious criticism of the entire endeavour to answer either of the ‘goals’ expressed above. Instead there was a curious emphasis on the water stains and their margins which, although not uninteresting in their own right, detracted quite markedly from the consideration of what constitutes the image and the blood.

Schwalbe and Rogers’s summary paper begins with an extensive resumé of why the Shroud had already been considered unlikely to be medieval based on various observations of photographs, and historical considerations, made long before the STuRP investigation began. When the possibility of an artistic origin is finally addressed from the point of view of the 1978 work, it is broken down, sensibly, into consideration that such an origin must be related either to the deposition of a colorant, or to the alteration of the linen fibres themselves. McCrone’s observation that the image is covered with iron oxide while non-image areas are not is noted, but attributed to a) painted copies being laid on top of the Shroud itself, and b) oxidised ‘blood’ particles being distributed unequally during repeated folding and unfolding over the ages. No evidence that any of the alleged painted copies were painted with red ochre (iron oxide) is given. It is noted that no pigment was observed under x50 magnification, as if that was significant. As can be seen above, the particles alleged to be pigment are clearly visible at x400, and are ubiquitous. It is also mostly on the surface of the fibres. Comparing the presence of these particles to Morris’s spectrographic conclusions, the paper says, “Within the detection and precision limits of the data, there were no detectable differences in the heavy-element concentrations between image and non-image areas.” This is untrue. Morris et al. measured the the image as containing an average of double the single non-image point sampled. Another attempt at the discreditation of the particles, that they were derived from the retting process, coupled to an obvious ignorance of the characteristics of flax fibres, smacks of desperation. Neither Heller nor Adler nor McCrone claim to have seen iron oxide particles on, or in, non-image fibres.

Rejecting the particles as the image chromophore, the paper considers an alternative colourant, the yellowing of a possible paint medium. In this they investigated McCrone’s final position (in his 1992 paper), that, “Microscopically, the image consists of yellow fibres and red particles; the red particles are more abundant in the red blood images, and the yellow fibres are the major coloured substance in the body image.” McCrone considered that the yellow colorant was from an old tempera medium, and identified protein with Amido Black, and specifically collagen by a test eliminating the sulphur-containing amino acids in other proteins. Schwalbe and Rogers claimed that a) McCrone only identified proteins in blood fibres, b) that his test for protein was inadequate to identify it anyway, and in general that “there is no evidence to support the contention that any of the above media produced the yellow fiber discoloration.” Some years later, stung perhaps by comments that his earlier papers, in the journal of which he was editor, were little more than vanity publishing, McCrone published ‘The Shroud of Turin: Blood or Artist’s Pigment’ in the impeccably peer-reviewed Accounts of Chemical Research, and later still, wrote a ‘popular’ book, Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud. These gave him an opportunity to respond to Schwalbe and Rogers’s inaccuracies. However there is no doubt that the main thrust of his earliest argument, that without the iron oxide pigment neither the Shroud image nor the blood would be visible at all, had been considerably toned down by the time he wrote these, and his original papers, in The Microscope, are now almost unobtainable, so it may be fair to say that some of Schwalbe and Rogers apparent falsities were true at the time they wrote their paper.

McCrone responded to Schwalbe and Rogers’s accusation that he only found protein in blood fibres by saying that in fact he found it in image fibres as well. In his book he explains that he originally thought the image had been fingerprinted with powder, but then changed his mind. The earlier version may be what Schwalbe and Rogers were referring to.

The second accusation is bizarre. Schwalbe and Rogers, and before them Heller and Adler, claim that Amido Black not only stains protein, but also cellulose as well, so is inadequate for testing for protein on a cellulose substrate. This is misinformed. In forensic science Amido Black is still commonly used to identify proteins on a fabric substrate. An important part of the process is the removal of excess stain using acetic acid, which apparently McCrone knew, but Heller and Adler did not. Heller and Adler tested for protein using different reagents, but found they were “only sensitive to the “0.1µg level.”

At this point the summary makes the remarkable statement that linen fibres consist of plant cells joined end to end, the abutments appearing like the joints in bamboo. This is not so. Individual flax bast cells are spindle shaped with tapering ends, and the bamboo-like rings are due to mechanical deformation. The comment does not affect any of the observations or conclusions drawn, so it was not necessary to make it, but it does not reinforce confidence in the authority of the paper. Reference to the ‘medulla’ rather than the ‘lumen’ of the flax fibres emphasises how unfamiliar the authors were with the structure off flax.

The paper goes on to make the very sensible statement that the scorch marks overlie image areas in some places. A comparison between unscorched and scorched image fibres might enable some assessment of the nature of the colour. However, the corollary to this comment, “No evidence for a scorched medium can be seen,” is downright disingenuous. The places where it might have been seen are the shoulders and elbows. No samples from these areas were taken or studied. Similarly, something might be learned about the image colourant by washing it with water, so a comparison between unwashed and washed image fibres could also have been instructive. In fact three areas of image-within-waterstain were sampled, but, as has been noticed before, only one image-without-waterstain, and insufficient descriptions of either were forthcoming, although it certainly appears that the image was not washed along with the water, as image can be seen within each stain.

There is no doubt that there are discrepancies in McCrone’s accounts, which he does not wholly resolve in his responses to Schwalbe and Rogers’ criticisms of his work. For example, in defence of his original insistence that the red particles alone composed the image (contradicted by his Accounts of Chemical Research paper but reiterated in his book), he says that “the predominant colour of the image is red not yellow.” Even allowing for quite divergent subjectivity in perception, this simply isn’t true. Nor is it true that ‘blood’ areas and ‘image’ areas are the same colour.

After fifteen closely discussed pages, the possibility that the colour of Shroud image is due to something applied, be it pigment, medium or a mixture of the two, is rejected. All that is left is an alteration of the chemistry of the fibres themselves, and a possibility that this was effected via a medium now removed is considered. The Gilberts, whose spectra were the best resolved, the clearest, and covered the widest range of wavelengths, showed that the spectra of the scorches and the image were extremely similar, so scorches were next on the list. They are rejected on the basis of the fluorescence that invariably accompanies a scorch, and of which there is no sign on the Shroud, and because of the practical difficulties of the process – assuming an artist was involved. Acid scorches are similarly rejected, although some attention is paid to an idea of Sam Pellicori’s, that a ‘latent image’ could have been created which only became visible after time, and probably after heating as well, caused by some substance such as myrrh, aloes, sweat or a reactive combination. Other ‘sensitizing materials,’ related to artistic endeavours are also considered, and the possibility that having had their effect they were then washed, rubbed or otherwise eroded away. A letter by Cyril Stanley Smith in Science, suggesting that “slightly volatile components of the resins and other volatile materials commonly used by painters as vehicles and binders” might have produced the appropriate discolouration, is seriously considered, but “so far there has been no experimental work done to test the feasibility of Smith’s general model.”This is not a rejection of the possibility.

Next the paper moves on to purely natural methods for transferring the representation of a body from a corpse to a cloth. Vignon’s ‘vaporograph’ and Pellicori’s latent-image process are discussed, noting deficiencies with both. In the end almost no conclusions are drawn except that the image as it is now is fibre-degradation based rather than an “applied pigment” and that ‘blood’ is probably blood. Typical sentences include:
“Unfortunately these phenomenological studies have implied nothing more definite about the image transfer process.”
“Much has been learned about the density shading and chemical properties of the image, but, so far, there are no firm ideas about how the image may have been applied to the cloth.”
“Several contact transfer models were considered, but none seems totally practical or convincing.”

The cautious tone of this paper justifies it as a sensible round-up of all the work covered by the STuRP team and many others involved in similar investigation over the years. It contrasts quite markedly with the aggressively authenticist tone of the ‘Summary of STURP’s Conclusions,’ which was anonymously “distributed at the press conference held after their final meeting in October 1981.” [Months after this was first published, I learned from Barrie Schwortz on a RealSeeker Ministries interview that it was written by John Heller.] Although it admits of some uncertainty, it sums up: “We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist.” Far from expressing the united views of STuRP, this was no more than confirmation of a schism which had begun even before the team went to Turin, and has gradually widened and developed right up to the present day. Not, I hasten to add, between authenticity and artistry – almost all the team became convinced that the Shroud was Jesus’s actual burial cloth – but between the true scientists, who would only go as far as the science could take them, and those for whom science was, from now onwards, no more than an advisory body to their conviction that the Shroud was not only authentic, but miraculous as well. When Kenneth Stevenson, often described as the ‘spokesman’ or ‘public relations officer’ for STuRP, wrote his account of the project, Verdict on the Shroud, he came out so firmly on the ‘miraculist’ side that he was compelled to announce that “neither the book nor its conclusions or interpretations are endorsed or approved by the Shroud of Turin Research Project.” John Heller’s book, Report on the Shroud of Turin, speaking for the other side, is relentlessly scientific (except for some weird flights of fancy as he speculates in fields outside his expertise), and does not even mention Stevenson.

THE 1984 PROPOSAL
For all the conviction of the ‘Summary of STURP’s Conclusions,’ it is clear that almost nothing had really been decided. In 1984, a second investigation was planned, with some explicit aims that contradict any definite statement regarding either the authenticity of the Shroud or its method of image formation. It was countersigned by Tom d’Muhala (President), John Jackson (VicePresident), and William Ercoline (Secretary). The new proposal suggested a three-week investigation, and 26 individual “work packages,” many of which were just slightly more sophisticated versions of the earlier study. One stated aim was to obtain a “Set of high quality x-radiographs,”and another a “Set of UV Fluorescence photographs,” although both these had been quite adequately achieved already in 1978. This new project was undersigned by Tom D’Muhala, John Jackson and William Ercoline, and contains a list, and brief biography, of the 39 members of STuRP, 23 of whom had not been involved in 1978.

Bizarrely, the “work packages” were presented in alphabetical order, from “Artificial Aging of the Shroud by On-Site Low-Power Laser Irradiation” to “X-ray fluorescence – B,” so that the three stated areas of research (Conservation, Authenticity and Image-Formation) are thoroughly confused. Between the first proposal and the fourth and fifth, all conservation related, are “Chronological Order Determination of the Blood and Image Applications,” and “Collection of Materials from the Surface of the Turin Shroud for Chemical and Physical Testing” which are authenticity and image-formation related. No. 6: ‘Dating the Shroud of Turin Using Radiocarbon Analysis’ is followed by ‘Discussion Sessions and Microscopic Examinations,’ which was a kind of continuous forum rather than investigation as such.

Work package No. 2, for example, was a proposal to remove about 20 serum-coated fibrils, remove the serum with protease, and examine the surface of the fibres beneath. This should reveal “whether the blood or the image arrived first on the cloth.” This proposal is identical to what had already been carried out by Heller and Adler, as reported in A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin: “This protease treatment also removes the golden yellow coating from the golden yellow fibrils, corroborating their their identification as “serum” coated fibrils. Interestingly, fibrils freed of their coatings using this technique closely resemble the non-image fibrils when viewed under phase-contrast .” We have to note that the 1984 proposal has nothing in it about comparing the alleged “serum-coated” fibrils with “image alone” or “non-image fibrils”. As has been noted before, lack of ‘controls’ is a theme that runs throughout the entire gamut of STuRP’s investigations.

Work package No. 3 was to collect and examine samples from the surface of the Shroud. although this time micro-air-pipetting and the teasing out of specific fibres under a microscope would be the method, rather than sticky-tape. The proposal comments that previously, “the samples were collected in a general way without specific “targets” in mind,” which is manifestly untrue, even if the actual sampling was less than satisfactory. It is notable that Ray Rogers was no longer involved.

At the end of the 177-page Proposal is a list of 85 questions the project might answer. They are arranged in random order, sometimes duplicated in different words, and are remarkable in the uncertainty they presuppose. To most authenticists, every single one of the examples below had already been ‘definitively’ answered by the published literature on the 1978 investigation. Why ask a question if the answer is already known?

They include:
– 5) In what temporal order did the blood and body images physically appear on the Shroud? [See above]
– 6) Are [the] blood images human blood?
– 7) Are there materials present on the Shroud that can further confirm the forensic hypothesis that the cloth covered a wounded human body? [A flagrantly biased question. What about materials that might challenge the hypothesis?]
– 9) Are there artist’s materials present on the Shroud and can they be accounted for? [Similarly partial]
– 23) What is the penetration depth off the body image into the cloth?
– 34) From a forensic point of view, what is the probable sequence of events which lead to the image structures (i.e. body and blood) on the Shroud? [Very similar to the Question 5, but separated by dozens of unrelated questions, illustrating the randomness of the order.]
– 39) Is the hypothesis that the image is that of Jesus consistent with what is observed on the Shroud? [This is an absurd question.]
– 46) Can the inorganic pigment hypothesis (e.g. Fe₂O₃) be quantitively tested by x-radiography, more sensitive that in 1978? [A tacit acceptance that such a hypothesis had not already been decisively rejected.]
– 52) Where are particles (dust) found?
– 57) What do body, scorch, cloth, blood, waterstain fibrils look like at high magnifications?
– 58) What are the visible fluorescent characteristics of various areas on the Shroud (e.g. body, blood, waterstains, cloth, scorch, etc.)?
– 63) Is the Shroud body image the result of a thermal scorch?
– 67) How do the spectra of bloodstains compare with those of various pigments that have been suggested (Fe₂O₃, HgS, etc.)?
– 75) Are there pigments in the blood regions?
– 78) Is there mercuric sulphide in the bloodstain regions? [These three questions are more or less the same.]

All in all the set of proposals, which took three months to prepare, are insufficiently focussed, overambitious, duplicative, repetitive and slightly pretentious, and it is not really surprising that the entire prospectus was rejected. According to Vittorio Guerrera (‘The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity‘) it was submitted to Cardinal Ballestrero on 16 October 1984. Very little has been heard of it since.

Where a reason is given for the 1984 investigation being rejected, it is invariably that it conflicted with numerous more or less simultaneous discussions about radiocarbon dating with other interested bodies. It is impossible to say how important radiocarbon dating was to the 1984 proposal. It appears sixth in the list of work packages, and the question “How old is the Shroud” is number 21 in the list of 85, but since the work packages were listed alphabetically and the questions in random order, no significance can be attached to that. Certainly it was given no prominence. The “work package” was led by Robert Dinegar (episcopal priest) and Robert Harbottle, with ten “analytical investigators and consultants,” most of whom later contributed to the actual radiocarbon dating in 1988. Interestingly the paper acknowledged that “only milligram (1 mg = 10^-3 g) quantities are needed” and that contamination “from human handling” was unlikely to result in an erroneous date. Neutron flux converting ¹⁴C to ¹⁶C was also discounted as “unlikely to contribute to the ¹⁴C concentration.” Samples were requested from charred areas under patches, the side strip, and the “lower-right hand corner of the Shroud” – exactly the spot so condemned by authenticists when it was chosen by Gabriel Vial and Franco Testore – as well as from a patch and the Holland cloth. No other controls were suggested. The samples were to be excised using “the latest in cutting and precision excising tools of the hand type,” which is a ludicrous way of describing a sharp pair of scissors.

THE 1987/1988 PROPOSAL
In 1987, Stephen Lukasic (peculiarly described as “never a formal member of the STURP Team” on shroud.com) drew up a reduced proposal for further STuRP investigation, describing himself as ‘Coordinator for Data Acquisition.’ It was presented to the Board of Directors for discussion on 30 June 1987. The directors were D’Muhala, Jackson and Ercoline, and also Alan Adler, Rudolph Dichtl, Robert Dinegar and Eric Jumper. Lukasik acknowledged that the 1984 proposal had been unsatisfactory, and unlikely to “reasonably conclude” an adequate study of the objectives of the 1978 investigation, but nevertheless used 19 of its 26 ‘work packages’ in his new proposal. He also claimed that the principal reason for investigating the Shroud should be to establish its condition with a view to conserving it as well as possible for the future, and not for establishing its authenticity or how the image was made. Whether there was an ulterior motive behind this is difficult to say. Most of the ‘work packages’ would contribute as much to any one as they would to any other. Omitted were “artificial ageing’ and ‘scorch’ experiments on small pieces of Shroud material, two ‘microbiological’ investigations into fungal contamination and an eccentric new hypothesis suggesting that the iron oxide on the Shroud derived from chemolithotrophic bacteria feeding on iron dissolved in the water responsible for the water stains, an isotopic analysis of the flax with view to establishing its geographic origin, another X-ray survey more or less duplicating the 1978 one, and an experiment for finding out how far the image penetrated into the cloth, which although promoted by John Jackson was described as “technically flawed” by Lukasic. The remaining 17 work packages were slotted into a detailed timetable of seven ‘phases,’ beginning with A: Pre-Test Period and concluding with H: Replacing the Shroud in the Cathedral. The whole investigation would last a week.

This proposal is published on a rootsweb site belonging to William Meacham, who seems to have become a significant player in the STuRP game about now. He also publishes some correspondence between himself and Stephen Lukasic, the result of which, he claims, was an amended proposal, which was sent to Luigi Gonella, the scientific advisor to Cardinal Ballestrero, on 3 October 1988. This was after the radiocarbon sampling had taken place, and was heavily influenced by it. The investigation was reduced to a single day, and six investigators, mainly simply to extract seventeen centimetre-long threads for later analysis, and some 3cm² samples for another radiocarbon test. Although “Conservation” is still posted first as the reason for the study, it is joined by “Accuracy of the Radiocarbon Age,” “Inconsistency of the Evidence,” “Fabrication Technology in the 14th Century,” “Historical Puzzle,” “the Shroud as a Fraud,” and “Curiosity.”

According to Meacham: “Sadly, the manner in which Gonella and the Archbishop handled the C14 results led to such a vicious controversy in Italy that STURP’s proposed testing died, and the organization itself was dissolved a few years later.” I think there was more to it than that. Partly the emphasis on conservation studies carried an implicit criticism of the Italian proprietorship of the Shroud, and also the division of STuRP into antagonistic factions was increasingly looking like a squabble between dogs fighting over someone else’s bone. From now on, I think, hands-on Shroud studies, if any, would be instigated, designed and managed by the curators and their advisors, not delegated. STuRP was not so much dissolved as dissipated. As a company it ceased reporting and was finally declared forfeit on 1 October 1993.