Who is Joe Nickell ? The Top page for this discussion. Read this first.

JOE NICKELL  attacks on provenance

You may wish to open Joe Nickell's article in a separate window to compare the text with the comments that follow. Joe Nickell's article is an attack on Raymond Rogers' scientific competence and honesty. Read Rogers' Letter to the Editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Ray Schneider's Comment on paragraph 3:   Nickell attacks the provenance of the sample as being "two little threads allegedly left over from the sampling" together with segments taken from an adjacent area (the Raes threads I suppose).  In Nickell's world, anyone who studies the shroud who is not Walter McCrone is "pro-authenticity" and "guesses" -- which is an unfair and dishonest characterization of the work of Benford and Marino.  Then Nickell quotes Rogers "Unlikely as it seems" out of context with the effect of making Rogers sound incoherent. In fact the citation, if honestly used, points out that Rogers initially began the study with a skeptical frame of mind and was led to agreement by the evidence.  

Nickell, however, is anything but honest.  I think the reasons cited for the sample site are also distorted.  We have heard that the site was selected for expediency, a site that was adjacent to a site already disturbed, and not because it was away from patches and seams.  Indeed, if I am not mistaken a major seam is quite close to the site.  

Philip Ball in a 2005 commentary in Nature magazine wrote more accurately: “Rogers thought that he would be able to ‘disprove [the Benford and Marino] theory in five minutes’.”

Instead Rogers found clear evidence of mending. He also showed, with chemistry, that the shroud was at least thirteen hundred years old. And he proved, beyond any doubt, that the sample used in 1988 was chemically unlike the rest of the shroud. The samples were invalid. The 1988 tests were thus meaningless.

Joe Nickell's article is an attack on Raymond Rogers' scientific competence and honesty. Read Rogers' Letter to the Editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Ray Schneider's Comments on a single page.