The Ungracious Guest

About the middle of June 2022, a podcast called ‘The Gracious Guest,’ hosted by Mike Creavey, invited Joe Marino to come in and answer the question, “How Old is the Shroud???” (Yup, three question marks). A good half of the interview is devoted to persistent insinuation that the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud was a conspiracy of dishonesty, whose purpose was to demonstrate a medieval origin for the Shroud, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The participants were in league, the Church collaborated and the results were fiddled. As this is palpable nonsense, the evidence Joe adduced in support of his claim was vague, inconsistent, and sometimes simply wrong. As we shall see.

By way of introduction, we know that in 1984 STuRP sent a proposal for a new multi-disciplinary examination to Cardinal Ballestrero, including a radiocarbon test. [1] This was passed on to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who, in the person of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, approved it on 4 July 1984, specifically recommending that the sample cut from the Shroud by Gilbert Raes be used for the test, and that the investigation be carried out under the guidance of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, “the only body able to guarantee procedural propriety.” [translation of letter dated 4 July 1984, filmed and spoken in La Notte della Sindone]

The 26 “work packages” were listed in alphabetical order, and “Dating the Shroud of Turin using Radiocarbon Analysis,” was No. 6. It was authored by Robert Dinegar, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an Episcopalian Priest. He gives Garman Harbottle of the Brookhaven lab as his ‘Coinvestigator,’ and the list of ‘Analytical Investigators and Consultants’ includes Harry Gove (Rochester), Paul Damon (Arizona), Edward Hall (Oxford), and Hans Oeschger (Bern, Switzerland). Nevertheless, Joe is probably correct that by now, both Harbottle and Gove were aiming to try to radiocarbon date the Shroud independently of STuRP. Various laboratories, and even Walter McCrone, had been negotiating with the church authorities in Turin for over ten years, and they did not want to become merely one of STuRP’s “work packages,” while STuRP felt that radiocarbon dating should be seen as an important part of a complete investigation.

Joe gives the impression that he thinks Cardinal Ratzinger’s “nihil obstat” was in fact a permission to proceed, but that was clearly far from the case. The details had to be arranged with the authorities in Turin, who do not seem to have endorsed it at all. It is not clear when the full proposal was either rejected or withdrawn, or why, but the radiocarbon dating project seems to have lasted a bit longer than the rest, of which nothing further is heard.

Led by Harry Gove (at least, according to his own book, Relic, Icon or Hoax, in which he takes the credit for practically everything to do with the carbon dating, even after his Rochester laboratory was excluded from it), dating the Shroud was informally discussed at the Twelfth International Radiocarbon Conference at Trondheim in July 1985, and then, under the chairmanship of Carlos Chagas of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, more formally in Turin in June 1986.

At Trondheim, according to Gove, there were representatives from the Zurich, Oxford, Rochester, Harwell and Arizona labs, and also the British Museum and STuRP. A possible protocol was thoroughly discussed, both then and later, and sent to the participants, but no copy has been published, and the various quotations found in books and papers all differ. [2]

The Turin meeting was at the end of September 1986, and another possible protocol was thrashed out. Contrary to Joe’s statement at 18:47, the STuRP proposals were not dismissed here, but firmly included, as part of Paragraph 4, which, as published, stated: “For logistical reasons, samples for radiocarbon dating will be taken from the shroud immediately prior to a series of other experiments planned by other groups.” Alan Adler was present, and had described exactly what the STuRP proposals were, and, with Robert Dinegar and Stephen Lukasik, a new but prominent member of STuRP, had fought their corner to success. [3]

Having set the scene, now comes a succession of snide remarks, all rather, if I may so call them “ungracious.”

At 19:24, an extraordinary exchange goes:

Joe: “The three [laboratories] that did it are still in existence; the four that were rejected – they’re all out of business. What does that tell you?”
Mike: “It’s at least suspicious.”

Suspicious of what, exactly? The four rejected labs were the Centre des Faibles Radioactivites de Gif-sur-Yvette, the Atomic Research Establishment Harwell, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Rochester. The first was principally a geological and meteorological research centre, the next two used the out-dated small counter system for radiocarbon dating, and the last is still going strong. The Oxford, Tucson and Zurich facilities were dedicated to archaeology and had already, in 1988, carried out many more archaeological datings than any of the others.

Next we learn that “there were a couple of screwy things” about the British Museum’s involvement. Teddy Hall, wealthy archaeologist at Oxford and unmasker of the Piltdown Man fraud, was a trustee of the archaeology-based British Museum, which oversaw the radiocarbon dating: “So there’s a conflct of interest, right there.”

In what sense? Both the British Museum and Oxford University were working to establish the age of the Shroud. Their interests were the opposite of conflicting – unless Joe is insinuating that Hall twisted his first-century results to conform to the British Museum’s fourteenth-century demands.

And then, “after the results, Oxford was given a one million pound donation, which was given on Good Friday 1989, to Oxford for ostensibly having proven the Shroud to be a fake.” Scurrilous nonsense. The Daily Telegraph of Saturday 25 March 1989 ran an article saying:

“The Oxford University “archaeological detective” who determined last year that the Shroud of Turin was a mediaeval fake, has raised £1 million to ensure his department remains in existence when he retires next year.

The money has been donated by 45 businessmen and rich friends to create a new Chair of Archaeological Sciences at Oxford, said Prof. Edward Hall, 64. When you get to my age, your friends tend to be either rich or influential or both. So it wasn’t all that difficult to raise the money. 

If I hadn’t done so and created the new Chair, my whole department might have collapsed. And I was determined to keep the work going after I retired.” [4]

It is not unlikely that the precision of the dating of the Shroud of Turin contributed to the success of Hall’s appeal, but the idea that it was “for ostensibly having proven the Shroud to be a fake” is wholly unjustified and merely meretricious. 

“Teddy Hall retired, and guess who got his job – Dr Michael Tite, from the British Museum. Another  little suspicious… couple of suspicious things there.” Why is that suspicious? One archaeologist retires and another gets his job. They were both high profile men in their field, and it was inevitable that they should know each other. The insinuation that it had something to do with an agreement to falsify the results of the radiocarbon test is not justified.

Returning to the protocol, and the decision only to take one sample, and that from the Raes corner of the Shroud, both Mike and Joe agree that it was the worst possible place, and Joe suggests that it was only decided upon on the morning of the test. “Despite the fact that they had spent three days in Turin going over the protocol, on the day that the sample was taken, April 21st 1988, a couple of Italians debated for about an hour and a half to figure out where the sample would be taken from. And they basically threw out everything that they had done in the three-day workshop in Turin.

This is muddled. The Turin Protocol, which had apparently been agreed to by all at the meeting, was not acceptable to the Pope’s custodian of the Shroud, although, according to Harry Gove, it had been acceptable to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in the person of Carlos Chagas. Gove had announced it at a conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry in April 1987, and it was published in the proceedings of the conference in November. However, by then it was dead in the water. In October Cardinal Ballestrero, who had never agreed to the Turin Protocol, had formally invited only three laboratories to take part, and in April 1988, Michael Tite published, in Nature, the protocol by which the operation would be carried out. It included the stipulation that “the shroud samples will be taken from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas.” [5]

As long before as 1974, the earliest proposals for radiocarbon dating had suggested using the Raes sample, which had already been cut from the Shroud and had been more carefully examined than any other part. However suggestions that both its chain of custody and the conditions in which it had been kept were so uncertain as to make it worthless had prompted both STuRP and Archaeologist William Meacham to suggest an area on the Shroud immediately adjacent to the place it had been cut from.

The STuRP 1984 proposal had listed: “two hundred (200mg) from each of the burned areas under and around the patches […] 200mg samples from the presumed side strip, one patch, and the lower right-hand corner of the Shroud […] we also request a 200mg sample from the Holland backing cloth.” (My bolding)

William Meacham had suggested: “1) a single thread from the middle of the cloth, between dorsal and ventral images; 2) a small piece cut just in from the edge next to the site of Raes’ piece I; 3) a piece of the charred cloth; 4) a piece cut from the side strip next to the site of Raes’ 11; 5) a piece of the backing cloth sewn on in 1534. The principal samples would be 1 and 2, with 3 possibly confirmatory; 4 would hopefully clarify the question of an added side strip: 5 would be a control for modern contamination. “ (My bolding) [6]

The idea that this area was unsuitable after all did not emerge until the unsatisfactory date was published In late 1988.

Finally, the “couple of Italians” – Joe means Franco Testore, Professor of Texile Technology at the Polytechnic University of Turin, and Gabriel Vial, a Professor at the Institut des Textiles de Lyon and senior member of the Centre International d’ Étude des Textiles Anciens – did not debate “for about an hour and a half to figure out where the sample would be taken from.”  Another Italian, Giovanni Riggi di Numano, who in spite of no particular qualification propably spent more time with his hands actually on the cloth than anybody else, had drawn up a very precise schedule of operations, in which the Shroud was unrolled at about 7:00 am, and the sample cut at around 10:00. [7] Naturally there was some discussion, and examination, to discover if there was a more suitable place, and Riggi cut the stitching of the backing cloth in several places to enable the state of the Shroud to be determined more clearly, but in the end, the recommended place was settled on after all. The fact that it was an area more handled that other places was well known, but, entirely sensibly, this was not considered a problem, as it was recognised, minimal and superficial, and fairly easily cleaned off, although – and this did become the root of the noisiest argument about the value of the medieval date – some traces may still have remained.

“It was just a fiasco from beginning to end.” I don’t think this has been established, but so far in this story, as Joe goes on to suggest, the biggest controversial action was taken by the Pope and his representatives, not the evil scientists. But read on…

“It was a shame the Church eliminated STuRP, because they knew the most about the cloth; and the C 14 labs knew very little about the cloth.” I actually I agree with the first part of this remark, but there are a couple of comments worth making about the quote as a whole. Firstly the American STuRP scientists knew almost nothing about the cloth. They had no textile experts or historians, and in the previous ten years had not published anything about the Shroud as a textile at all. This is in contrast with the Italian 1973 commission, which included Silvio Curto, Professor of Egyptology and Curator of Egyptian Antiquities at the University of Turin, and Noemi Gabrielli, Italy’s leading Art Historian. Furthermore, that “couple of Italians” mentioned earlier were also present to add their expertise. Secondly, STuRP wasn’t eliminated! Riggi di Numana, who was the final hand that wielded the scissors, described himself as “Vice-Président executif” of STuRP, and concluded his report to the Symposium Scientifique International conference in September 1989 with: “The entire work plan was self-funded by the STuRP Italy working group, which brought the whole operation to term.” [8]

On with the poisonous drip-feed. “About the only thing [the C 14 labs] knew was the fact that it had historically surfaced in France about the 1350s. So the date that they came up with was 1260-1390, and not surprisingly 1350 fits in that range. But I have to believe that they were going to make darn sure that 1350 did come out…” Why does Joe “have to believe” that? Does he believe that the radiocarbon date did not come out around 1350, and was manipulated to fit? Or that, by a lucky chance, the radiocarbon date did come out around 1350, and the labs all breathed a sigh of relief?

“The labs did not release the raw data after the original test which is unheard of in science.” Absolute nonsense. Today, when supplementary information can be stored on the internet and released at whim, raw data is often accessible, but thirty years ago, when scientific papers were printed in journals, there was insufficient space for all the tiny details, and authors were often instructed to simplify their accounts. This specifically occurred in the case of the Nature paper on the Shroud, as can be read in the data released in 2017 by the British Museum. [9] Good examples of other papers for which minimal raw data was provided are Heller and Adler’s paper, A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin, and Ray Rogers’s Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin.

Around halfway through the interview, Mike diverts Joe towards his reweave hypothesis, and denigration of the radiocarbon team pauses for a while, but back it comes ten minutes later…

“It’s just the norm in scientific experiments that’s when you finish an experiment you release your raw data so that other scientists can check the repeatability aspect of the scientific method.” Now, sometimes; then, rarely, but you could always ask for it. “The British Museum refused to release the data, which, you know, raises eyebrows.” I don’t believe this is true. I have never read that anyone even asked for it, let alone was refused. When Tristan Casabianca asked for it, he got it. The first person to examine the radiocarbon data critically was Remi van Haelst, in 1997. He writes that he contacted Morven Leese, the British Museum statistician, and Drs Wilson and Ward, whose statistical method was used to analyse the data, and Prof. Bray of the Istituto di Metrologia, Turin. They all replied, helpfully. This surprises me, as his papers are aggressive, confusing, and peppered with phrases in capital letters, which makes them difficult to read. [10]

“What [Tristan Casabianca and his fellow analysists] discovered was that the labs did multiple testings and threw out a lot of the dates that would have skewed the 1260 to 1390 range. They just threw them out.” This isn’t true. It isn’t what happened, and it isn’t what Casabianca’s paper says happened. Either Joe hasn’t read it, or he hasn’t understood it, or he’s lying. I guess the second. All the labs cut their samples up and tested each sub-sample, several times, separately. Average results for each sub-sample were found and submitted to the British Museum. Average results are, obviously, higher than the lowest value, and lower than the highest value, of the range from which they were calculated. To say of these values “they just thew them out,” is merely ignorant. As it happens, if the highest and lowest values of the results are assumed to represent the extremes of the actual range of dates they represent, then the 1350 date remains squarely in the middle. [11]

Joe: “Now it becomes a little clearer why they didn’t release all the data for us, because people would say, “Yeah? You can’t just throw out the dates you don’t like, to come up with a…” Remember I said they wanted to make sure they’d get the 1350?”
Mike: “Right. It seems to heavily imply, if you throw out dates that aren’t in the range you’re looking for in advance, that looks pretty suspicious.”

Yey! Let’s make up some evidence and try to bash the radiocarbon results with it! Who cares about the truth?

Mike: “[Did the British Museum give any reason why they wouldn’t release the data when people asked them before?]”
Joe: “No. I don’t remember seeing… basically, as far as I can tell they just said no.” I don’t remember anyone even asking the British Museum for the data, which is probably the reason why Joe can’t remember its reply.

The last fifteen minutes or so of this interview are much less obsessive, but the damage is done. This kind of mean-spirited, unjustified, ad hominem attack does the authenticist cause no favours, and weakens the position of those who, for reasons of faith or their own interpretation of the evidence, believe that the radiocarbon date is wrong.

[1] Formal Proposal for Performing Scientific Research on the Shroud of Turin, 1984

[2] e.g. Gove, Harry, Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud, 1996
Kersten, Holger and Gruber, Elmer, The Jesus Conspiracy, 1995
Sox, David, The Shroud Unmasked, 1988

[3] The Turin Protocol was formally published in Gove, Harry, ‘Turin Workshop on Radiocarbon Dating the Turin Shroud,’ Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B29, 1987

[4] The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 25 March, 1989

[5] Tite, Michael, ‘Turin Shroud,’ Nature, 1988

[6] Meacham, William, ‘Radiocarbon Measurement and the Age of the Turin Shroud: Possibilities and Uncertainties, Proceedings of the Symposium ‘Turin Shroud – Image of Christ?,’ 1986

[7] Riggi di Numana, Giovanni, ‘Prelievo di Piccoli Frammenti di Tessuto dalla Sacra Sindone per la Datazione del Lino con il Metodo del Radiocarbonio,’ handwritten, 1988

[8] Riggi di Numana, Giovanni, ‘Prélèvement d’un morceau de tissu du Saint Suaire de Turin,’ Actes du Symposium Scientifìque International, 1, Le Prélèvement du 21-4-1988 Études du Tissu, 1989

[9] Statistical notes by Morven Leese, released by the British Museum in 2017

[10] Van Haelst, Rémi, Radiocarbon Dating The Shroud: A Critical Statistical Analysis, at shroud.com, 1997

[11] Casabianca, Tristan, et al., ‘Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data,’ Archaeometry, 2019