Talk:Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin

"Theories" or "material"?

The word "theory" does not really cover all of the stuff presented here. Quite a lot of it is pseudoscientific work presented without any underlying theory at all, people measuring things that would never test any hypothesis. And some is straightforward baseless ranting. Rather than dignify this stuff with the word "theory",what about "material"? Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:15, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Too pedantic, in my opinion. Common usage is to use the term "fringe theory" for many things that are not actually theories.

Other common phrases that are not actually true:

• "Search the four corners of the earth" (we now know that the earth is a sphere).
• "Burning the midnight oil" (we now use electricity for lighting, not oil lamps).
• "Roll up the car window" (we now use push buttons instead of cranks, and BTW 'crank up' and 'roll up' have different meanings, the latter implying a flexibility usually lacking in glass and an opening at the bottom).

--Guy Macon (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Too pedantic for a sober encyclopedia? What about "ideas" instead? Richard Keatinge (talk)

WP:COMMONNAME. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

@Richard Keatinge:, this term is used in hundreds of articles and this isn't the right place to discuss changing the word "theory" in referring to them. You're welcome to raise the topic at WT:FRINGE, though; perhaps you'll get traction there. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Post-move cleanup

Note that there would be some post-move cleanup required to other articles, if/when now that this draft is moved to mainspace. Some of that has to do with removing duplication in other articles, in particular, fringe theories in the main article which should merely be summarized in a paragraph and headed with a {{Main}} link pointing here. Also, off-loading fringe stuff currently in the main article and relocating it here. Details:

• material imported from Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin; see #Importing Material above
• observing due weight in the main article; see this conversation at DRN Archive 164.

Please add more items to the list as you think of them. Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 15 October 2018 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 05:46, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Further importation of material from main article

Resulting from discussions at https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Prepare_for_the_excrement_to_impact_the_rotational_air_impeller... I have moved some additional fringe material here from the main article. Please join in to help build the encyclopedia. Wdford (talk) 12:40, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to claim that theories which are approved for publication in highly respected scientific journals, after peer review, are "fringe theories." Not one of you who created this page is a scientist. This article is straight POV and should be deleted in whole. 64.67.122.103 (talk) 11:50, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Andrew Wakefield and Jacques Benveniste published their fringe theories in highly respected scientific journals, after peer review. It seems that the real world is ridiculous. You have no leg to stand on. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:49, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

That's a completely empty non-response. Thanks for playing. 64.67.122.103 (talk) 18:42, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not. It is a direct refutation of the ridiculous claim It's ridiculous to claim that theories which are approved for publication in highly respected scientific journals, after peer review, are "fringe theories." Only someone who has no clue about how science works can write something like that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

To be more explicit: Fringe ideas get published in scientific journals (to which a Wikipedia user or IP can attach as many peacock terms as they like, such as "respected") all the time. That is one of the reasons why we have WP:SCHOLARSHIP. If a shroudie gets something published (primary source), one has to check the mainstream reaction (secondary source). Is there any, and is it positive? If all the reception comes from the shroudie subculture, the paper is WP:UNDUE. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:47, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Again, more emptiness from you. You have no science background, so don't lecture me. I am far more training and experience in scientific fields than you do. Obviously. You are transparently unschooled and inexperienced in these fields. 64.67.122.103 (talk) 20:52, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

More imaginative fantasy from the omniscience-pretending IP. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:58, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Response

@Wdford, this is my response to your edits [1]:

The 'Despite conclusive scientific evidence that it is of medieval origin' should be removed due to the concluding paragraph in "Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data":

The discussed statistical analysis reinforced the argument against the goodness of the radiocarbon dating of the TS, suggesting the presence of serious incongruities among the raw measurements. Our results, which are compatible with those previously reported by many other authors (Brunati 1996; Van Haelst 1997, 2002; Riani et al. 2013), strongly suggest that homogeneity is lacking in the data. The measurements made by the three laboratories on the TS sample suffer from a lack of precision which seriously affects the reliability of the 95% AD 1260–1390 interval. The statistical analyses, supported by the foreign material found by the laboratories,show the necessity of a new radiocarbon dating to compute a new reliable interval. This new test requires, in an interdisciplinary research, a robust protocol. Without this re-analysis, it is not possible to affirm that the 1988 radiocarbon dating offers ‘conclusive evidence’ that the calendar age range is accurate and representative of the whole cloth.

This article from a peer-reviewed journal is telling us that it is impossible to state that the 1988 radiocarbon dating is conclusive. Ergo, due to Wikipolicy of WP:RS, this information must be accurately covered in Wikipedia articles.

Considering that 13 researchers contributed to the articles that are at the end of the sentence about those that challenged the dating, certainly it can be said to be 'numerous'. Here are their names:

1. Gianni Barcaccia
2. Giulio Galla
3. Alessandro Achilli
4. Anna Olivieri
5. Antonio Torroni
6. Emmanuel Poulle
7. Joseph Marino
8. Sue Bedford
9. Raymond Rogers
10. Marco Riani
11. Anthony C. Atkinson
12. Giulio Fanti
13. Fabio Crosilla

Finally, it's impossible that the scientific hypotheses used to challenge the dating have been refuted before they were even published! All of the articles that are claimed to have refuted those claims are more than a decade old and it is Wikipedia's task to be up-to-date. Also one of the sources in the sentence about how all alternatives have been claimed to be refuted states the following (https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/shroud.html):

There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that we continue to test the accuracy of the original radiocarbon tests as we are already doing. It is equally important that experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information.

Why would further research be needed, if the 1988 tests were conclusive? Neither does the author of this source say that everyone raising questions about the topic are fringe, like this Wikipedia article is portraying them to be. It's very unscientific to pretend that one test done 35 years ago is the be-all and end-all concerning the dating of the TS when peer-reviewed work strongly criticizes such a conclusion. Cukrakalnis (talk) 16:39, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You're clutching at straws. The matter is settled for everybody, except for woo peddlers. tgeorgescu (talk) 18:01, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Me saying that the information from the article "Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data" must be accurately included in this Wikipedia is not "clutching at straws", it's what we should do according to the very basic principles of Wikipedia, specifically WP:5P2. This peer-reviewed article from the journal Archaeometry is certainly an authoritative source and the fact that this topic is still being investigated in such authoritative sources is clear proof that this matter is not settled for everybody and not everybody who disagrees is whatever you called them. Cukrakalnis (talk) 18:27, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics". These statisticians - who have never personally seen the shroud up close - would be more scientific if they worded their conclusions a bit more honestly to say "we believe that it is not correct to claim a date range of 1260 to 1390 with 95% confidence, because a 95% confidence level would actually require a date range of 1210 to 1440." This is effectively what they are concluding, but because they have a personal POV they word it a bit more vaguely, so that straw-clutching shroudies can seize upon this to mean that the entire C14 test is invalid, and that the subject is wide open once again. The argument that the "lack of homogeneity" means the tested samples were not a single representative sample, is total hogwash. Various experts who have actually examined the shroud, all concluded "definitively" that the samples are all part of the original shroud textile. The "lack of homogeneity" has been explained by C14 experts as resulting from the fact that the different labs all used completely different cleaning processes, and that these different processes seemingly varied in effectiveness by a few percent. They were counting atoms, after all. This would cause a problem if they were trying to pin down the date of manufacture to "during the 1st Crusade vs during the 2nd Crusade", but for the purposes of determining "during medieval times vs during biblical times", the C14 test is totally "definitive". The "theory" that there is a dating "trend" or "slope" across the three samples is also hogwash, because the Arizona sample was actually made up of fragments taken from both ends of the sampled area. Wdford (talk) 18:30, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

And there is no way an actual shroud of a crucified man would have produced something like a portrait photo. It would have looked more like this. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cukrakalnis This has been discussed exhaustively many times in the past - please review the archives, including as quoted by tgeorgescu above.

Your suggested new source is not really new. After shuffling around the raw data, aided by a degree of supposition and assumption, they concluded only that the 1260–1390 calendar age range is not reliable. Their "analysis" came up with a range which was only a few decades wider than the original, and it was nowhere near disproving the medieval age of the shroud cloth. This conclusion was worded very carefully to create the impression for the believers that the C14 dating was disproven, while at the same time the wording carefully skirted around outright lies so as to still pass peer-review. Read it again carefully.

Serious scientists have already noted the "lack of homogeneity" - which could be caused by some exotic supernatural effect, or which could also simply be due to the difference in the cleaning methods employed by the different labs. The difference in the results between the labs is minute, and does absolutely nothing to disprove the overall medieval conclusion.

Every radiocarbon expert who has reviewed the matter has concluded that the dating is reliable. Your "13 researchers" are not radiocarbon experts. Some are statisticians, some are "other scientists", and some are quacks. Sue Benford was a psychic nurse, who never saw the shroud and who derived her expert knowledge thereof directly from Jesus, who explained it all to her in a dream. The sheer number of "other" challengers does nothing to outweigh the actual scientific evidence.

These challenges to the dating all go back some time. They have all been refuted conclusively by real scientists using real evidence. When fresh "challengers" appear with fresh papers which merely repeat hypotheses which have already been refuted, then the content of these new papers has already been refuted, and no additional publication is required. It's how science works. It is NOT a case of whoever publishes last is deemed to be winning.

Your quote from Ramsay of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit is quite correct. That is a good statement from a good scientist. However nowhere does Ramsay say the C14 dating has been disproven, only that it is good scientific practice to keep testing new hypotheses. This article actually resulted from such a test – to test if the Shroud might have been contaminated by carbon monoxide - and the C14 dating was again proven correct.

Crucially, you strategically omitted the sentence just before that quote, where Ramsay points out unambiguously that "It is important to realise, however, that only if some enriched contaminant can be identified does it become credible that the date is wrong by 1000 years. As yet there is no direct evidence for this - or indeed any direct evidence to suggest the original radiocarbon dates are not accurate". That is not really neutral editing by you, now is it?

Conclusion – the C14 dating has survived many challenges, and has been found by all radiocarbon experts to be correct and reliable – even if the range perhaps needs to be slightly wider. In contrast, the "other" evidence that "suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates" is not scientifically verifiable, and therefore does not stack up in a scientific argument. The fringe will continue to plead their case, as is their right, but Wikipedia must distinguish between facts and fringe theories. Wdford (talk) 19:46, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

What you're saying is your personal knowledge and you haven't provided me with a single source. What matters on Wikipedia is reliable sourcing and what they say, not user-generated synthesis/interpretation, no matter how well-written, well thought-out or researched. Furthermore, where do you find the 'date range of 1210 to 1440' or anything of the sort explicitly mentioned in the article? It's not there. Hopefully, you'll agree that sources are there to be used for what is in them. That is the proper use of sources - we can't just make-believe that the authors really meant one thing when they wrote something you dislike.

Both of your writings make it clear that you both have very strong opinions about this topic and obviously want that to determine the way that this Wiki article looks, but WP:NPOV is non-negotiable. Obviously reliable sources, even ones we might strongly disapprove of, ought to be included in a manner that reflects what is written in them, not what we want them to say or what we guess that they are saying.

Regarding that phrase from Ramsay, he was talking about contaminants and the largest part of the article was about carbon monoxide. Please do not insinuate that I am somehow editing not neutrally, because I read the article and that's why it remained there in the sentence "(...) - and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.[12]" I did not strategically omit any sentence to give a false impression. The reason why I quoted the whole concluding paragraph here was because it provided more context and would be better understood by you than if I just cited one or two sentences. It's disappointing that you are already assuming WP:BADFAITH in me, because you think that it is suspicious of me that I quoted only a single paragraph instead of copy-pasting the whole article here. I was thinking that my initial message was too long and that unfortunately I had no way of putting it shorter, but you, instead of being acknowledging of the fact that we must be as concise as possible, immediately presume the worst-case scenario - that I am trying to mislead you purposefully.

The reason I mentioned the 13 researchers was because you asked me a question in one of the edits about how many is numerous. I think you'll agree, 13 is numerous. That was the only reason they were mentioned.

Wikipedia relies on sources instead of assumptions. It is unreasonable to presume that someone whose views we dislike are already dismissed 'a priori' and they are necessarily fringe, woo peddling, etc. None of us are scientific authorities and even if we were, we must rely on sources when editing Wikipedia articles.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:45, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Science has spoken: the idea that the Shroud of Turin is non-medieval is WP:PROFRINGE. The idea that it dates from the Antiquity is sheer WP:FRINGE.

That is: Wikipedians judge the reliability of sources every day. Some sources are found wanting. This is normal, this is to be expected. There is no requirement that Wikipedians should be credulous. I don't say that you have to like evaluating sources or agree with it. It is just the way we do things around here, and there is no reason to refrain from it.

This is not a website where pro-fringe apologetics is taken lightly: it amounts to an attack against the core principles of Wikipedia.

When a source is playing fast and loose with the facts, it matters. One way of playing fast and loose with the facts is being overly vague instead of making precise statements. In this case, precision would have required Casabianca c.s. to honestly state that they failed to falsify the medieval origin of the shroud. Failing to do that can be only seen as playing fast and loose. Bad faith means in this context assuming that we would be under an obligation to be gullible in respect to their paper. Do note that WP:VNT has been deprecated.

We know they played fast and loose, we know this is due to being biased for a foregone conclusion, these facts cannot be erased from the public record.

While you may argue that we have to trust Casabianca c.s., it cuts no ice, and WP:AE is just around the corner. Sources aren't born equal. tgeorgescu (talk) 00:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

The sources are all in the article already. Go read the article properly, before you lecture other editors about the use of sources. In particular I refer you to a 2020 paper by the respected pro-authenticity advocates Bryan Walsh and Larry Schwalbe. They concluded, inter alia, that:

• "At this time, the source of the statistical heterogeneity of the Shroud data is unknown, but one of two broad hypotheses could reasonably account for the effect. One is that some differences may have existed in either the sample processing or measurement protocols of the different laboratories. The other is that some inherent variation was present in the carbon isotopic composition of the Shroud sample itself ...
• "An alternate hypothesis is that some difference in residual contamination may have occurred as a result of differences in the individual laboratories' cleaning procedures ...
• "In support of the contamination hypothesis, Fig. 4 illustrates how the mean results from the Zurich and Tucson data (open symbols) agree within their calculated experimental error (note level B-B′), whereas that from Oxford does not (A-A′). If the Zurich and Tucson data were displaced upward by 88 RCY as shown in the figure all of the results would agree within the uncertainty observed. Indeed, if the magnitude of the "adjustment" were as small as ~10 RCY, the χ2 analysis would confirm a statistical homogeneity assuming the uncertainties in the data did not change."

Because the Casabianca paper is not written by radiocarbon experts, but rather is a statistical analysis which ignores many salient facts, it is doubtful if this is a "reliable source" on this issue. Despite their obvious bias, the Casabianca report does admit (at page 7) that "each TS raw and published radiocarbon date indicates a medieval interval for the fabric." They also state, seemingly with a straight face, that "They used the known locations of the tested samples in each laboratory and showed a significant decrease in the radiocarbon age as one gets closer to the centre of the sheet (in length, from the tested corner). This variability of the Nature radiocarbon dates in a few centimetres, if linearly extrapolated to the opposite side of the TS, would lead to a dating in the future." They have thus nullified their own hypothesis, but still they rush to publish it. This is why serious scientists ignore such papers, and why Wikipedia confines them to articles with the word "fringe" in the title.

It is good to be concise, but not when this results in you leaving out the crucial sentence that clearly states that no evidence has been offered which disproves the C14 dating – especially when your entire point is to use this article to claim that the C14 dating has been disproved.

And as tgeorgescu mentions above, "Sources aren't born equal". 13 quacks and statisticians do not outweigh multiple radiocarbon scientists and researchers who have actually studied the shroud under high magnification. Wdford (talk) 11:49, 20 July 2023 (UTC)