The Authentication of the Turin Shroud: An Issue in
Archaeological Epistemology : Part 4
By William Meacham - Archaeologist
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY - Vol. 24 - NåÁ 3 - (June 1983)
Published by the University of Chicago Press
Copyright 1983 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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by K. O. L. Burridge
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6H 1P9. 1 xi 82
Meacham is to be congratulated on a provocative essay.
I am not conversant with the techniques used to test the
Shroud, so I cannot evaluate them. Only the ignorant and
perverse are unaware that 90% of relics are frauds. Relics
are "venerated," bought, and sold because, being concrete,
and in a suspension of both belief and disbelief, they serve
as memory points concentrating attention on particular
events. Church authorities and the custodians of the Shroud
are fed to the teeth with the hoo-ha. They have it by a
chain of accidents, and they exhibit it from time to time,
ceremoniously, because, like all relics (including the
Piltdown skull), it concentrates the mind on particular
events. If it is genuine, so much the better; if not, who's
bothered?
Scientists share with most of the lay population a proper
scepticism in the face of the unlikely. They will also take
a leap beyond the evidence if need be. We have King Tut's
mummified body - but on whose say-so? If there were no body,
would it still be King Tut's tomb? One footprint and Crusoe
surmised (correctly) that someone else was around. Several
footprints across the hardened mud and we surmise a little
Lucy found somewhere around. Many footprints and sightings
(unreliable these), but Sasquatch or Bigfoot is more in the
imagination than actually there, so it seems. Why no
scientific search? A real basis for the imagination in
relation to UFOs seems to be in place. But why did it take
so long to take the sightings seriously? Angels may be, but
spacecraft from another planet? Is the idiom, the language,
really so much a hindrance? It would seem so. Bereft of
technology and a professionalised scepticism, on which so
much hangs, scientists are on the whole much like anyone
else: reputation and status at stake in orthodoxy.
In the present case, technology has failed to prove the
negative. Yet an affirmative is not the only other
possibility. Faith in a negative is as good as faith in an
affirmative. If Jesus Christ was not a historical figure,
then of course the Shroud, if it is a shroud, cannot be his.
If Christ actually lived, then it would seem that the Shroud
might have been his. So many of our supposed certainties are
actually possibilities or probabilities that now and again
we need, as a basis for our faith in the rest, something
that is without doubt either precisely what it appears or
seems to be - authentic - or a fraud. Also essential, of
course, providing material for thought and faith, is the
ambiguous. As Meacham has demonstrated so well, the Shroud
is just that.
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by John R. Cole
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of
Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614, U.S.A. 13 xii 82
This is more religious apologetic than analysis. Meacham
claims to discuss his topic from a strictly scientific
viewpoint, however, and I will adopt the conceit here,
raising technical objections to a patently religious
argument. Tacked-on references to skeptical views do not
disguise a credulous bias and hope.
Contrary to Meacham, extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary proof, in part because they are liable to
extraordinary incentives for fraud, wishful thinking, and
unconscious bias, and attempts to prove the Shroud of Turin
"authentic" have to be attempts to prove it "supernatural"
and thus supposedly beyond scientific proof. The cloth could
date to the 1st century but the image need not; both could
date to the 1st century without originating in Palestine;
they could be from 1st-century Palestine but not from the
grave of Jesus; and evidence for any of the above could be
faked.
The image is not "perfect." The body is taller than a
typical 1st-century Palestinian. The right hand has much
longer fingers than the left (Angier 1982). Supposed wounds
are too clear to be true; real bleeding would not appear as
discrete streams, for example. Dr. Michael Baden, former
chief medical examiner for the City of New York and one of
the world's most distinguished pathologists, has said that
the image is patently fraudulent (Rhein 1980, cited in
Mueller 1982:26). Yet Meacham says the medical verdict is
"unanimous" in support of the Shroud.
Walter McCrone, probably the best-known forensic
microbiologist in the world, identified vermilion and
hematite pigments in the "bloodstains" on the cloth -
pigments which would seem to prove the image fraudulent
(McCrone 1982, Mueller 1982). Meacham dismisses McCrone.
STURP also dismissed him when he came to conclusions
contrary to their hopes ("I was completely ignored" [Angier
1982:60]). Contrary to Meacham, STURP publications do not
prove McCrone's arguments wrong.
Claims of impressions of coins on the eyes are baseless, yet
Meacham lists these as partial proof of his thesis. The
alleged coin-images are artifacts of observers' hopes and
beyond the limits of photo enlargement and the coarseness of
the Shroud weave.
Meacham attempts to prove a religious claim scientifically.
He fails to do so. High-tech shroudology, like "scientific
creationism," ultimately fails to resolve an intrinsically
religious question via science. A massive investigation
could be mounted with the goal of proving the Shroud
fraudulent, but who would finance it? And what difference
would it make? Only confirmation of the Shroud is
newsworthy, yet only disproof is scientifically possible.
Religion and science can be in conflict, but they need not
be so on the practical level. Meacham violates the
"sleeping-dog" rule - stirring up an issue which redounds to
the detriment of his religious viewpoint when examined in
detail. A religious person should ask, Why denigrate
religion by subjecting it to materialistic tests? A
scientist should ask, Why should a religious claim be
granted the boon of hopeful suspension of disbelief rather
than skepticism?
How did the Shroud wrap a body without any distortion of the
impression by folds and wrinkles?
Why did a vivid 14th-century image fade radically over the
next five or six centuries when it had supposedly remained
bright and clear until its 14th-century "discovery"?
The details of crucifixion recorded on the Shroud are said
to echo biblical evidence. Actually, they echo only the Book
of John - which is generally regarded as nonhistorical (cf.
Bornkamm 1974, Schafersman 1982a). Any fraud worth its salt
would try to fill biblical prescriptions.
Normal tests of archaeological evidence do not apply to
claims for the Shroud. A religious claim requires more
evidence for possible proof than a nonemotional one. A tool
found at Ben Franklin's old address may be identified as his
according to normal standards, but a Shroud claim has to be
judged according to exceptional standards; the Franklin
claim has little import, while the latter has tremendous
claim to significance, right or wrong.
Computer analyses of the image on the Shroud are said to
indicate three-dimensionality, but this is debatable and in
any case irrelevant, a reification of unclear phenomena and
interpretations.
Nickell (1978, 1979, 1981) has shown that a shroud-image can
be duplicated as a rubbing, although not that this one was.
Other experiments demonstrate that negative images can be
produced by impressing a cloth on a body anointed with
spices and oils, and vermilion pigments or blood could add
to the effect.
Extraordinary claims demand an extraordinary skepticism and
rigorous analysis which Meacham fails to provide.
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by Richard J. Dent
Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College
Park, Md. 20742, U.S.A. 6 xii 82
We live, in the 1980s, in an era that sees mythology and
science often clash. Both forms of religion stand on
devotion to some principle which, in one way or another,
negates the principles of the other. Yet now scientific
scrutiny is called upon to authenticate a relic from the
opposite camp. I shall not, in this commentary, join in the
debate by offering a point-by-point criticism of the
author's documentation of what he sees as a firm
archeological judgement for the Shroud's authenticity. I
have no trouble in recognizing a man on a crusade, and the
reader and, no doubt, other commentators are capable of
interpreting and ultimately judging the so-called evidence,
or lack thereof, for themselves. It is my belief, however,
that this paper does represent an important epistemological
issue in anthropological archeology - although I doubt it is
the one intended by the author. Simply put, the arguments
for the Shroud's authenticity illustrate that this relic is
an authentic artifact not of the event in question, but of
ourselves and our society.
For the last 20 years, anthropological archeologists have
recognized that not all artifacts are the same. Binford
(1962) reminds us that artifacts, as material elements of
culture, fall into one or more of three categories -
technomic, sociotechnic, and/or ideotechnic. Ideotechnic
artifacts are artifacts that are material representations of
society conceptualizing itself. They contrast with the more
familiar artifact categories that include objects employed
in subsistence activities (technomic artifacts) or in social
integration (sociotechnic artifacts). Following Althusser
(1971), ideology and, by extension, ideotechnic artifacts
are products of the imaginary relation of individuals in
society to the real relations in which they live. Ideology
is a mask. To begin to understand and to pierce this mask,
and thus understand the significance of Meacham's paper, we
must first recognize the Shroud and this particular
documentation as an artifact of ourselves. Once we have done
this, the paper has a lesson of value for anthropological
archeology.
In short, the overall goal of Meacham in this paper, as seen
through his eyes and the eyes of much of society, is to
suppress or lessen the conflict that arises when an event is
mythologically real but materialistically and empirically
unreal. If one can suppress the conflict of believing in the
crucifixion yet not having any direct evidence to
substantiate it, the mythology is more believable. And if
one can achieve this goal with the opposition's methodology
(scientific method), so much the better. In reading this
paper, it should be evident that Meacham is trying to remove
a contradiction for us - to substantiate what he sees as a
real event and attach it to a believed-in event. We must at
least give him high marks for an attempt at documenting one
of the great ideotechnic artifacts of our time. However,
following Handsman (1980) and Leone (1982), we should not
lose sight of what Meacham is up to: he is creating an
ideotechnic artifact, albeit a grand one, nothing more.
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by John P. Jackson
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Shroud of
Turin Research Project, 14415 E. Club Villa Drive, Colorado
Springs, Colo. 80908, U.S.A. 13 xii 82
I am always interested in reading papers written by persons
who have not been part of the Shroud of Turin Research
Project, the group of scientists who examined the Shroud in
1978. Deciding exactly what the Shroud is is by no means a
trivial task and involves input from many scientific and
scholarly disciplines. It is necessary to collect these
inputs, as Meacham has done, in order to address the
question of authenticity. While I share the author's
apparent conclusion that the Shroud is probably the burial
cloth of Jesus, I do think some critical comments are in
order. My general impression after reading this paper is
that scientific research on the Shroud is sufficiently
complete that the authenticity question can reasonably be
settled in favor of the Shroud as the true burial cloth of
Jesus. If others have also received that impression from
this article, then it is important to point out that,
although the case for the Shroud's authenticity is rather
good, in my opinion, the authentication question is still
open and I therefore would not want to discourage further
research on the Shroud. In particular, two major holes exist
in the authentication issue. First, 13 centuries of relative
silence concerning the Shroud of Jesus (with image) need
explanation. While various theories, some discussed by
Meacham, have been proposed, there is no unanimity among
scholars. Carbon-dating the Shroud, which should be done,
can tell us if it has a 2,000-year history but cannot tell
us what that history is. Second, science has not been able
to determine the mechanism of image formation. Unless we can
identify the image-formation process, we cannot be sure, in
a scientifically rigorous sense, that the image was made
directly from a human body under a draping cloth, even
though evidence is mounting that this was the case. Without
this critical determination, it seems to me that the
authentication question will be open to dispute. Therefore,
rather than argue authenticity on the basis of incomplete
studies, we should point out where research is incomplete
and encourage further studies where appropriate.
The authentication of the Turin Shroud is a scientific issue
apart from any religious interest. Ultimately, the
authenticity question must rest upon what has been written
about Jesus in the Bible, for that is essentially our only
source of information concerning him. This is valid only as
long as it is understood to what extent the Bible represents
true history, realizing that it is first and foremost a
theological understanding of the Jesus of history. Science
is a well-defined pattern of human thought, and, especially
in the case of the Shroud, where bias can so easily enter
in, adherence to sound reasoning and analysis is essential.
In essence, science is the process of discarding hypotheses
when there are observational data with which they are
inconsistent. All too often, however, investigators
unknowingly do just the opposite; they start with an
observation (i.e., iron oxide on the Shroud) and "deduce"
the hypothesis (i.e., the image is due to an iron-oxide
pigment) and call this science. I have become sensitive to
such abuses of the scientific method. The careful scientist
will rather start with various hypotheses to explain some
observation (e.g., the image is an iron-oxide pigment or
iron oxide is due to translocated aged blood fragments,
etc.) and look for independent observations (e.g., body
image not the color of iron oxide, density of iron oxide not
sufficient to account for body image, etc.) that will
discriminate between hypotheses. Thus, the scientific method
whittles away unacceptable hypotheses, leaving in the end,
ideally, the correct explanation for the Shroud image.
Meacham's paper is a reasonably good anthology of
scientific, historical, and scholarly data, but I think it
suffers in places from a lack of scientific rigor in the
sense noted above (e.g., the "whip marks and the side wound
[observation] appear to have been inflicted with Roman
implements [hypothesis]" or "the lack of decomposition
staining of the cloth [observation] indicates that . . . the
Shroud was removed from the corpse after 24 to 72 hours
[hypothesis]"). However, with these caveats, I think
Meacham's paper presents an interesting, overview of how
various data interrelate to illuminate issues pertaining to
authenticity. Further, in view of the various data already
collected concerning the Shroud, one cannot but be impressed
at the resistance of the hypothesis that the Shroud is the
burial cloth of Jesus to scientific rejection. On that
point, I believe Meacham and I are in agreement.
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by Walter C. McCrone
McCrone Research Institute, 2508 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago,
Ill. 60616, U.S.A. 8 xii 82
I appreciate Meacham's attempt to provide a balanced
approach to the discussion of the Turin "Shroud." He
succeeds well in all areas except one - inclusion of the
only direct physical data on the image particles from the
"Shroud." Of this work he states: "attempts to interpret it
["Shroud"] as a painting (McCrone) . . . are untenable . . .
and need not be discussed further." He bases this conclusion
on the "vast array of data to the contrary." Nowhere does he
present or discuss my work: what I did, how I did it, or why
he considers my conclusions invalid. He does not even
reference one of my detailed papers (McCrone 1981). I feel
like Hughes Mearns's "little man who wasn't there": "He
wasn't there again today/Oh! How I wish he'd go away." I
will not try to explain why my work is ignored, but I will
say the painting hypothesis is not untenable. It is based on
sound microscopical examination carefully done by an
experienced microscopist who has studied many dozens of
paintings over many years by the same procedures. Whatever
reputation I may have rests confidently on the conclusion
that the "Shroud" is entirely an artist's work.
Others who have looked at the fibers from the sticky tapes
do not see the paint pigment obviously present there. They
prefer to believe the image is blood, yet my work shows no
blood - only red inorganic pigments, iron earths and
vermilion. I can accept that I am outnumbered, but I refuse
to believe I am outgunned. No one has spent anything like
the time and effort I have put into study of these 32 tapes
with their thousands of "Shroud" linen fibers and millions
of pigment particles. No one in STURP has this specialized
background in small-particle identification, trace analysis,
or the study of paintings by microanalytical methods.
Substantially all of the image on the "Shroud" fibers
consists of common and well-known pigments and a stain on
the fibers due to ageing of the paint medium. I do not see
any other significant colored material on any of the
"Shroud" image fibers. If one removed "my" paint layer from
these fibers there would be no visible image remaining on
the "Shroud."
I would very much like to see my work evaluated and repeated
by one of my peers in this highly specialized field.
I have made no great effort to defend my position in the
past because I seem to run into minds already made up and
because I have confidence that the eventual carbon-dating
will clear the record and show the "Shroud" to be of
medieval origin. I note that Meacham now says a carbon date
may well be inaccurate because the "Shroud" is so
contaminated. I find the "Shroud" linen fibers to be well
over 90%, intact and pure. The impurities present can
readily be removed before dating, hence this argument has no
validity. More difficult to refute is the argument I hear
occasionally that the resurrection so modified the linen
that any carbon date is bound to be meaningless.
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by Paul C. Maloney
Ancient Near Eastern Researches, Box 334, Quackertown, Pa.
18951, U.S.A. 7 xii 82
More than a year has passed since STURP released its
preliminary findings. In essence, the image on the Shroud
remains an unresolved question. Already there have been
attempts to evaluate STURP's work. Some highly antagonistic
presentations have tried to show that it lacked scientific
objectivity (see Mueller 1982; McCrone 1982, and especially
Schafersman 1982a:55-56). Meacham's irrepressible optimism
is sure to pique those who are as strongly convinced the
Shroud is a fake. He states: "applying standards of proof no
more stringent than those employed in other
archaeological/historical identifications, one is led . . .
to an almost inescapable conclusion about the Shroud of
Turin: it is the very piece of linen described in the
biblical accounts as being used to enfold the body of
Christ. "
For two reasons, both antagonists and protagonists are
premature in their conclusions. First, while STURP seems to
have made a good case for the Shroud cloth's having wrapped
a dead body, we still have no undisputed evidence that the
Shroud is older than 1357. If we conclude, with STURP, that
the cloth does not appear to have been faked, we might
simply suppose that it wrapped a crucified victim in the
14th century. However, crucifixion had been outlawed 1,000
years before. Clearly, the cloth must first be subjected to
C14 tests before there can be any advance in understanding
the historical background of the Shroud and bridging the gap
between the 1st and the 14th century. This is one of those
"standards of proof" mandatory for any interpretation of
this cloth.
Meacham dismisses C14 dating by appealing to contamination
problems, but sophisticated techniques clean a sample before
testing to remove most contaminants. Margins of error are
supplied with each date given, providing a measure of
accuracy. Meacham mentions some sources of contamination. Of
boiling in oil STURP could find no evidence. "Variations in
ambient atmosphere" are not a contaminant, but rather have
to do with the original intake of C14 from the current
reservoir, an amount which can be deduced by data from
tree-ring dating. And while it is true that C14 would date
only the cloth and not the image, it seems logical to assume
that, whether the image is of natural or artistic origin,
the date of the cloth and the creation of the image should
not be too far removed from each other - certainly not 1,300
years. And if the cloth should prove to be of 1st-century
origin, then the argument that it was the burial shroud of
Jesus would be more compelling.
Secondly, since STURP has not completely published the
details of its techniques, instrumentation, laboratory
experimentation, and scientific findings, lack of
information remains a problem. For example, while Meacham is
well versed in Heller and Adler's work analyzing the
bloodstains on the Shroud, he states: "It is possible . . .
that an artist or forger worked with blood to touch up a
body image obtained by other means." He makes no mention of
the very intriguing suggestion that the bloodstains might
have been there before the image was. The full critical
details of this observation have not yet been published
(see, provisionally Schwalbe and Rogers [1982:40]). If it
should prove correct, it would bode ill for the artist
hypothesis.
Two other points must be addressed relating to Meacham's
subtitle, "An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology." First,
even should one accept STURP's basic conclusion that the
cloth enwrapped a corpse, the wealth of details encoded
there is often capable of divergent interpretations. Zugibe
believes the elongated fingers of the Man of the Shroud to
be evidence of Marfan's syndrome (1981 : 188-92). John
Jackson, of STURP, believes the elongation is an expected
distortion created by cloth-to-body drape (personal
communication). Second, we must distinguish between "proof"
as the term is often loosely employed in the human sciences
and "proof" in the exact sciences. History and archaeology
are not capable of "proof" in the strictest sense. Sabloff
(1918:5) has put it succinctly: "the archaeological record
cannot be converted directly into historical facts." Those
in the exact sciences use the term "proof" in a rigorous and
precise manner. On this issue one of the STURP scientists
said at a conference: in New London in 1981, "We do not have
a chemical into which we can dip an eyedropper, put a bit on
the Shroud and by observing the color change prove that the
man there was Jesus Christ." The most we can expect is a
reconstruction that makes the best use of all the facts. It
is difficult to do more than this, since the Shroud still
holds crucial but obtainable secrets.
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by Marvin M. Mueller
Physics Division, MS-E554, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Los Alamos, N.M. 87545, U.S.A. 21 xi 82
Meacham's article is a thorough and impassioned presentation
of the case for authenticity but should not be considered a
work of balanced scholarship. The reader would never glean
from it that general and powerful arguments have recently
been advanced in support of a human-artifice origin for the
Shroud image. These arguments have not been refuted by the
pro-authenticity scientists of the STURP.
Within the space constraints, there is no possibility of a
point-for-point rebuttal of Meacham's lengthy review here.
For details, the interested reader may consult my critical
appraisal of the Shroud investigation in the Spring 1982
issue of The Skeptical Inquirer, a publication of the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of
the Paranormal (P.O. Box 229, CPS, Buffalo, N.Y. 14215).
This is, to my knowledge, the first reasonably thorough
critique of the Shroud investigation published by an outside
research scientist.
Meacham as authenticity advocate is formidable; Meacham as
investigative reporter tends toward gullibility and
onesidedness. He often misunderstands skeptical arguments,
damns them with faint mention, or - most often - just
ignores them. As is evident to readers of the many books and
magazine articles on the Shroud that have appeared over the
past two decades, Shroud investigators have usually been
characterized by their pro-authenticity enthusiasm and
markedly religious interpretations. About this there can be
little disagreement. Meacham fails to take observer bias and
evident will-to-believe into account in his judgements -
even in notoriously subjective inferences from diffuse and
dubiously resolved image details. The well-known Rorschach
effect is not confined to inkblots.
Meacham states:
The image was found to be anatomically flawless down to
minor details: the characteristic features of rigor mortis,
wounds, and blood flows provided conclusive evidence to the
anatomists that the image was formed by direct or indirect
contact with a corpse, not painted onto the cloth or
searched thereon by a hot statue (two of the current
theories). On this point all medical opinion since the time
of Delage has been unanimous.
In my article (Mueller 1982), which Meacham cites, it is
made clear that this is not true. For example, a leading
forensic pathologist (Michael Baden, deputy chief medical
examiner of New York for Suffolk County) says (as quoted by
Angier 1982:60): "From my knowledge of dead bodies, and the
wrapping of dead bodies, this kind of transfer never occurs.
And blood never oozes in nice neat rivulets, it gets clotted
in the hair. The anatomic accuracy is more what Michelangelo
would have done in a painting than what actually happens to
a body." He also disputes the inferences concerning rigor
mortis and wound pathology, which have long been a mainstay
of the long line of "all medical opinion" cited by Meacham.
Meacham further fails to mention the two pivotal theses of
my article (which have not been refuted by the STURP):
1.The celebrated "three-dimensional effect" begs the
question as to whether the Shroud ever contained a full
relief (statue or body). All that it shows is that there is
a local consistency in tonal (intensity) gradations of the
image. Hence, there is no evidence that the image was formed
by some kind of projection across cloth-to-body distances.
2.All of the extensive chemical and microscopic evidence is
consistent with a hypothesis (based in part on the
Shroudlike rubbings from bas-relief sculptures done by Joe
Nickell) that the image on the Shroud was put there by an
artist using an imprinting method with a powder or semisolid
medium which has subsequently reacted, evaporated, been
washed away, or otherwise disappeared, leaving behind the
degraded and colored cellulose fibrils which now form the
image.
More specific hypotheses of image formation have recently
been developed. These are largely based on experiments
carried out by forensic analyst John Fischer using iron
compounds extensively employed by medieval artists. With
such rubbing media, Nickell has produced good Shroud image
simulations which automatically reproduce the main
microscopic as well as macroscopic features (Mueller 1982,
Nickell 1983). (Contrary to Meacham's assertion, rubbing
from bas-reliefs was a well-known technique by the 12th
century.) These facts alone, not to mention many others,
make a mockery of Meacham's claim that "although the
image-forming process is not known, the image itself is an
important document of Christ's crucifixion and has
appropriately been termed 'the fifth gospel' . . . the
present evidence allows a firm archaeological judgement for
authenticity."
The one argument from my article that he does mention he
apparently fails to understand. He states: "The absence of a
satisfactory explanation of the image formation does not, as
Mueller (1982:27) argues rather curiously, rule out natural
processes and leave only human artifice or the
supernatural." Curious or not, my argument has the logical
force of geometry behind it, for there is no way that an
image of the quality and beauty of the Shroud image could
have been produced by contact of the cloth with a full
relief (body or statue) - projection distortion in mapping a
full relief onto a plane alone guarantees that, as has been
made manifest in several experiments. To cite an extreme
example: A sheepskin laid out flat does not much resemble a
sheep. Only human intervention (leaving aside the
supernatural) can produce a quality image of a full relief.
Other compelling arguments, discussed in my article, can
also be brought to bear against the much-publicized
contact-transfer hypothesis. In fact, STURP members, having
publicly disavowed human artistry, concede that they
currently have no scientifically viable hypothesis of image
formation.
Generally, Meacham's views of the consensus of the STURP are
rather dated. For example, he makes much of the pollen
evidence of Max Frei as well as evidence for a burial chin
band. Few, if any, of the STURP members give any credence to
either, nowadays. Also, he does not seem to have understood
the implications of the good summary report of the
scientific results from the 1978 investigations written by
Schwalbe and Rogers (1982). Contrary to all STURP press
releases, these leading STURP scientists guardedly conclude
that human artistry cannot really be ruled out at this time.
The STURP of 1981-83 is less monolithic and much less
certain in its pronouncements than was the more-publicized
STURP of 1977-79.
Further examples of Meacham's failure to present a balanced
view of the present status of the Shroud investigation are
probably unnecessary here. The interested reader is directed
to a recent book by Nickell (1983), written in close
collaboration with John Fischer and myself. Of the many
books written on the Shroud, this is the first to be done in
collaboration with non-STURP scientists. Besides giving a
detailed critique of the Shroud investigation, it presents a
powerful case for clever artistry.
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