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Shroud of Turin is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
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(From the lede) The microscopist Walter McCrone found, based on his examination of samples taken in 1978 from the surface of the shroud using adhesive tape, that the image on the shroud had been painted with a dilute solution of red ochre pigment in a gelatin medium. McCrone found that the apparent bloodstains were painted with vermilion pigment, also in a gelatin medium.[5] McCrone's findings were disputed by other researchers and the nature of the image on the shroud continues to be debated.
Given that there are numerous conflicting theories about the shroud, it isn't appropriate to select one, mention their findings in the lede to the exclusion of all others, and only acknowledge at the end of the para that those findings are disputed. Not good enough. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]06:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a theory. He found those pigments. "Other researchers" may well be the STURP cranks who "dispute" everything that points to the Shroud being anything else but a 2000-year old miraculous Jesus selfie. I cannot access the source. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:42, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
He says he found those pigments. Others obviously disagree with him. But whether he did or didn't find what he says he found, is not the point. We're not interested in "the truth" here, just in the verifiability of the info we present. It's fine to mention his research findings, but not in such a prominent place as the lede. That is, unless we also mention in the lede the other theories and their supporters. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]10:45, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Who are those "others"? Are they the gullible loons from STURP? McCrone was a down-to-earth scientist who had no reputation for introducing fancy notions into his work, unlike the sturpies. There is no reason to doubt what he wrote, and there is no reason to mention fringe ideas in the lede. There is another article that does that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:46, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"There is no reason to doubt what he wrote" - that is exquisitely irrelevant to this issue. But you sound like you're wedded to his findings, finding all alternative points of view by definition unworthy of consideration. You then compound your error and further display your bias and disinterest in a neutral point of view, by referring to "the gullible loonies from STURP". Until such time as McCrone's - or anyone else's - explanation for the Shroud is widely and generally accepted by the scientific community, ALL research findings are theories, not facts. And that is the crux of my objection to giving undue weight to McCrone's - or anybody else's - theories in the lede. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]09:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Read WP:FRINGE and WP:YWAB. Not all ideas are treated equally on Wikipedia. STURP is a bunch of people who grasp at straws. All of their reasoning is based on rookie mistakes and baseless speculation.
McCrone gained a highly prestigious scientific prize for his research, and he represents the scientific orthodoxy. Claims that his research got debunked are WP:FRINGE.
McCrone's been dead for over 20 years. Since then, 21st century forensic scientists have extracted data from the substance on the cloth; confirmed there is blood on the shroud; identified blood type; discovered human DNA; and discovered nanoparticles of blood which would indicate that the body pictured on the cloth suffered great trauma. These articles have been published in renowned journals after peer review. If McCrone were alive, he'd concede the point that his mid-20th century evaluation has not held up. 69.12.13.37 (talk) 18:46, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An analysis of unprovenanced samples cannot amount to debunking. McCrone had access to the real shroud, but afterwards independent scientists no longer had access to it. So it's not independently confirmed: those who published such results were not unbiased researchers, but they had a vested interest to sell the story that the shroud could be authentic.
I'm not saying that McCrone cannot be wrong. I'm just saying there is a certain burden of proof for stating that he was wrong.
Anyone who "doesn't waste time debating" views that are genuinely held by respected colleagues is not worthy to be called a scholar. Closed-mindedness to anything that's different from what one perceives as holy writ is the mark of arrogance. Scholarly discourse depends on open-mindedness. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]02:06, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've said this several times already in earlier discussion in this talk page, but it's very important to bear in mind that Walter McCrone is by far the most qualified expert who's ever been allowed to examine physically the material of the Shroud of Turin. He's the only scientist who's worked on the Shroud directly who was an acknowledged expert on the authentication of ancient artifacts (indeed, that's why Ian Wilson had invited him to join STURP and work on the Shroud). And McCrone's work, far from having been convincingly debunked (as most "sindonologists" try to make it seem), was eventually published in a leading scientific journal (the Accounts of Chemical Research, a more prominent journal that any in which other members of STURP have published) and rewarded in 2000 with the National Award in Analytical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. - Eb.hoop2 (talk) 01:44, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No one doubts McCrone's sincere efforts to study the Shroud or his extraordinary credentials. But he's been dead now for over 20 years. And since his examination the Shroud in the late 1970s, amazing advances in the fields of the forensic sciences have resulted in more advanced ways to examine the Shroud that McCrone didn't have available to him during his lifetime. Advances in pathology have been made likewise. McCrone's conclusions just don't hold up any more. He'd be the first to admit that of he were alive today. This article makes no effort to counter McCrone's dated research with more modern research. If you were serious about improving this article, you would do so. 69.12.13.37 (talk) 11:42, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You need WP:IS in order to posit modern research. Papers by Shroudies won't do.
Also, a real burial shroud will never produce such image. So, the Shroud of Turin is obviously, patently fake. It's fake precisely because it purports to render Jesus's portrait. tgeorgescu (talk) 14:09, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I never said anything about Jesus, whether the Shroud is his burial cloth, or anything other than it is a confirmed fact that the blood on the shroud is real, and came from a trauma victim. And this information comes from peer-reviewed studies published in leading scientific journals. This article needs to be improved by including these observations from more modern sources. 69.12.13.37 (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you want that information in the article, you need to provide WP:IS. Not negotiable. Which you can't provide, because for decades independent scientists have no access to the shroud.
How long will this page hold to the dubious claims that Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) is not accepted science, when it is used all the time in peer-reviewed studies, and its conclusions accepted.
But to your question, the following sources all conclude and/or proceed from the assumption that there is genuine blood on the shroud (which is the narrow point we are addressing), and thus all contradict McCrone's belief that there is no blood on the shroud. These are all peer-reviewed, often double blind, and published in established scientific journals.
Fanti G. New Insights on Blood Evidence from the Turin Shroud Consistent with Jesus Christ’s Tortures. Arch Hematol Case Rep Rev. 2024;9(1):001-015. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.17352/ahcrr.000044
Jumper EJ, Adler AD, Jackson JP, Pellicori SF, Heller JH, Druzik JR. A comprehensive examination of the various stains and images on the Shroud of Turin. Archaeological Chemistry III, ACS Advances in Chemistry 205.
"Investigating the color of the blood stains on archaeological cloths: the case of the Shroud of Turin.
Di Lascio A, Di Lazzaro P, Iacomussi P, Missori M, Murra D. Appl Opt. 2018 Aug 10;57(23):6626-6631. doi: 10.1364/AO.57.006626. PMID: 30129604.
"The Shroud of Turin: a pathologist's viewpoint." Bucklin R. Journal of Leg Med. 1982:33-9. PMID: 6750297. [I am not aware of any pathologist who accepts McCrone's position].
"Some experiments and remarks regarding the possible formation of blood stains on the Turin Shroud: stains attributed to the crown of thorns, the lance wound and the belt of blood. König L, Schmölders R, Jühling M, Reckert A, Heger A, Ritz-Timme S. Int J Legal Med. 2024 Jan;138(1):229-238. doi: 10.1007/s00414-023-02959-6. Epub 2023 Feb 11. PMID: 36764944.
I suspect you will add some comment to the effect that all of this is "fringe" and this discussion will be closed, and the discussion hidden through the archive process. 69.12.13.37 (talk) 15:28, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The WP:BURDEN is proving that for decades independent scientists have no access to the shroud is false. For decades, the Catholic Church does not allow independent scientists to investigate the shroud. Only true believers claim they have access to the shroud.
To answer the charge: yes, WAXS is used all over the place. However, it isn't used for dating anything. The claim of WAXS dating is a novel claim, which did not receive the assent of the scientific community.
When, say, only people who take formal oaths that the shroud is genuine are allowed to examine the shroud, that renders their scientific claims meaningless. That goes against falsifiability and organized skepticism. So, their papers have been published as scientific papers, but their claims do not fulfill the groundrules of science. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And you speak for the scientific community? Ask a 21st-century archeologist who has just discovered an ancient cloth what means he will utilize to have it dated. WAXS is being used for dating cloth artifacts all the time.
And where do you get that scientists must sign oaths before examining the Shroud, or be a "true believer"? Because that's not true either. 69.12.13.37 (talk) 16:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just fulfill the mentioned burden of proof if you want your claims stated.
"Tested on the Turin Shroud, it is based on a new principle compared to current techniques" quoted from [1], dated November 2024. "If the textile fibers have undergone a process of aging not only natural, linked to the mean secular temperature and relative humidity of the places and locations where the archaeological find has resided, but also actions of acidic, basic, enzymatic, microorganism, insect, etc. substances, then the WAXS dating technique cannot be used to determine the age of the find." tgeorgescu (talk) 16:31, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just gave you a list of peer-reviewed papers published in leading scientific journals. Don't pretend otherwise regarding the blood.
One requirement of doing science is that every other scientist could in theory check the claims of any scientist. Which does not happen for the shroud, because the Catholic Church does not allow it. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:28, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another requirement of doing science is avoiding the temptation to discredit studies whose findings call previous conclusions into question.
Yet another requirement is avoiding the temptation to condemn novel approaches to scientific questions (cf. the WAXS study) because "no one's ever done it that way before."
I fear that philosophical presuppositions against miracles so skew some of your views that you are unable to moderate this page objectively. To censor any mention of the 2022 WAXS study, simply due to the novelty of its approach, seems extremely overreactive, not to mention reactionary and unscientific. It's rather apparent, in my opinion, that there's more going on here than simply a scientific quibble. AchatesFortis (talk) 02:51, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When a new dating method is introduced, it needs to be tested on uncontroversial subjects. If it gives the same results as established methods, the test succeeds. If it does not, it fails. That is a very, very basic concept.
Your personal general deliberations (which could be also used to defend homeopathy, astrology, rain dances, flat earth, perpetual motion machines and every other type of bullshit on Earth) have no place here. If you succeed in publishing them in a scientific journal and manage to turn around the consensus, we can consider using them. Until then, bye. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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