Customer Reviews

Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin

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This is an excellent book on the research that McCrone did on the Turin Shroud and the story surrounding the research. It's part biography, part historical narrative, and part scientific report on the evidence examined. It will be better appreciated by those with a scientific background, especially those with an appreciation of chemistry and microscopy; however, the non-scientist can appreciate this book for the storytelling, and for the many photos that help explain the evidence.

True believers in the shroud will always find ways to discredit any evidence that it is fake, and those who want to believe or to convince others will perpetually argue that neither side has sufficient evidence. This is a first-hand account from someone who actually examined evidence from the shroud, and in this account, the evidence examined is laid out for the reader. An important point that I think has gone overlooked is that in this book, McCrone states that he expected to confirm that the shroud dated from the time of Christ -- he expected to find evidence pointing to the shroud's authenticity. Instead, after much examination and testing, McCrone had to conclude that the shroud was a fake because of the evidence. (Another note: The time period which McCrone concluded that the shroud actually originated in coincides with the carbon dating results, which were done much later after his research.)

When faced with new evidence, some people change their views. And other people, when given proof contrary to their beliefs, dismiss it and the person providing it. That was what was done to Walter McCrone by STURP and the Church; his career was severely damaged long before he published this book. In fact, I had never heard of McCrone's research on the shroud until just a few years ago, which is a testament to how well the religious establishement and its followers have marginalized McCrone and his participation in examining the shroud. Even so, McCrone's ideas on how the shroud originated are far more plausible than the theories put out in a sensationalized TV show I saw a few years ago -- a show which mentioned the carbon dating, but not a word about McCrone. As for another sceintist repeating McCrone's work for verification -- this book also explains the barriers (lack of access to shroud or the original slides -- access controlled by the Church, of course) to making that happen.

Although this book centers around the Turin Shroud, it is really about a scientist who sought to do a thorough job and honestly report his findings, and who found himself persecuted for doing precisely that. The ultimate lesson I took away from this book is to stay out of the business of trying to prove or verfiy the correctness of strongly-held beliefs, expecially religious beliefs. The believers, even the ones who sought you out and hired you to do the job, will vilify you if you don't give them the answers they want.

"In order to get a supernatural explanation out of the "Shroud", one must be Scientist. But if someone gets a supernatural explanation out of the "Shroud", then one is not Scientist. But in order to..."

*Walter, I'm glad to see that my work was not in vain and that the Pursuit of Truth has finally overtaken perceived truth. The title alone, "Judgment Day For The Shroud Of Turin", is worth the price of the book (30 pieces of silver). The fact that Heller's book, arguing for the authenticity of the Shroud has long since fossilized in the Apologist's Hall Of Fame and gone out of print while your book remains popular kind of says it all.*

The beauty of the book is that while McCrone puts the "Shroud" under the microscope, in a typology which ironically is so crucial to many Church doctrines, McCrone at the same time puts the faith of a Church which believes its leader is infallible but couldn't even tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow under the microscope as well. So, in addition to presenting overwhelming and then some evidence that the "Shroud" is really a shroud the book becomes a wonderful illustration of the nature of Apologetics. Ignore/deny superior tests for supporting conclusions and create/cling to inferior tests supporting assumptions thus placing the usual scientific process backwards (isn't this evidence of Satan?).

If McCrone is guilty of anything it was baiting the Church into thinking that he was exactly the type of scientist wanted by the Church, top credentials but sympathetic to the cause of the Church and determined to prove the Shroud authentic. In his initial letters to Father Rinaldi, offering his services to research the Shroud, McCrone titled his letters, "Authentication Of The Turin Shroud" and wrote, "The provenance for the Shroud is known dependably for more than 600 years with considerable evidence extending this date back to the time of Christ...The protection of this information through proper channels must remain uppermost in our minds...I sincerely hope we may be able to work on this most interesting project and hope that we will be able to obtain data supporting the conclusion that this linen was indeed the one used as Christ's Shroud after the cruxifixion."

As a scientist McCrone should have known before he started his testing that the Shroud was 14th century as he was familiar with the extant letters from the Bishops of Lyons (yes, "Lyons") to the then Pope stating that the creator of the Shroud had confessed that it was a painting (this fact more than any other illustrates the absurdness of the necessity to even test the Shroud for authenticity as the situation is that we have second and third hand evidence that the "Shroud" is a fraud while we have no hand or even foot evidence that there even was a burial shroud of Jesus). Even the supporters of the "Shroud" generally agree that these letters are authentic but they claim that they refer to some other burial Shroud of Jesus near Lyons at the same time (ignore/deny). McCrone had also studied the results of testing by the 1973 Italian Commission, the first group of Scientists, hand picked by the Church, to test the Shroud whose results strongly implied that the Shroud was a 14th century painting. Aside from the conclusive evidence that McCrone found indicating the Shroud was a fraud the Church and Christian scientists involved in the study of the Shroud also came to hate McCrone because they felt that his initial portrayal of being sympathetic to the Church was a false appearance to induce the Church to use him and hid his true belief that the Shroud was a fraud and he wanted to prove that it was to feed his ego and build his reputation as a great scientist.

The bulk of the book consists of McCrone explaining the necessity, procedures, analysis and conclusions of scientific testing of the Shroud in terms easily understandable to the non-scientist and this is where McCrone excels as in addition to superior scientific skills he displays supreme communication skills as a teacher as well. McCrone proves through the use of state of the art microscopic technology that the Shroud image consists almost entirely of paint pigments popular in the 14th century. While generally conceding that there is some paint pigment on the Shroud, supporters of the Shroud deny that the image is a painting because there is no evidence of brushstrokes when examined microscopically. To answer this objection McCrone demonstrated that if the paint was sufficiently diluted in a water base there would be no detectable brushstrokes. McCrone recreated shrouds using the same paint materials used on the Shroud and reported that there were no visible brushstrokes on the recreations and that under the microscope the particles were identical between the recreations and the Shroud and challenged any Shroud supporter to try and tell the difference (a challenge which is still untaken). McCrone next demonstrated that there is no actual blood in the "blood" image areas of the Shroud. Dried blood under the microscope is always black but the blood areas of the Shroud were red. Chemical analysis of the blood image areas also indicated that they lacked major chemical components of blood such as potassium. Shroud supporters, such as Heller, conclude that the blood image areas are blood because they contain some chemical components of blood such as calcium and iron but they ignore that paint pigments also contain calcium and iron. When asked to explain why the usual tests for the presence of blood fail here, such as black color and existence of potassium, they explain that the explanation is some unknown process (ignore/deny).

These then were the two significant conclusions of McCrone, the image is a painting and there is no evidence of blood. McCrone wrote up the results of his testing in articles for peer reviewed and accredited scientific journals and his results are largely accepted by the scientific community at large. McCrone also deals with claims of Shroud supporters who are then forced to rely on inferior issues to support their beliefs. Regarding the common supporter claim that the "Shroud" is a perfect negative image McCrone points out that the hair and blood images of the Shroud are positive, not negative images. The other popular supporter claim is that the Shroud contains a collection of pollens which support a journey from the Middle East, to Turkey and then to Europe. McCrone notes that his examination of the Shroud indicated that the majority of these pollens were concentrated in one extremely limited area of the Shroud and recognizing that he is not a pollen expert provides a special section in his book detailing the report of a pollen expert who has serious doubts as to the credibility of the Scientist (Frei) who reported the pollen findings. McCrone builds such a strong case for the Shroud being a 14th century painting that when McCrone reports towards the end of his book the results of carbon dating showing a 14th century date (surprise) it's actually anti-climactic.

McCrone also describes his impressive credentials, tools and talent for such a project and is quite merciful in describing the lack of corresponding qualifications of his Christian "scientist" opponents instead limiting himself to objectively describing their limited qualifications and use of inferior equipment. John Jackson for instance, perhaps McCrone's biggest critic, had the main qualification for studying the Shroud of being a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Generally, the Christian scientists supporting the Shroud have not had peer reviewed articles published in accredited scientific journals.

McCrone's reward for his work was to be ostracized and shunned by the Church and fellow Christian scientists who in addition to obviously not liking his results were incensed that unlike some predecessors who had similar findings McCrone had the courage to make POSITIVE conclusions ("The Shroud is a 14th century painting") rather than play the Church's game and avoid positive conclusions indicating the Shroud was not authentic ("I did not find evidence that the Shroud is from the 1st century").

In the face of this persecution McCrone displays a timely and welcome sense of humor during his book giving appropriate placed applicable quotes such as Ambrose Bierce's "Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

*Walter: Did you ever know you are my hero? You are the cleaning solution beneath my microscope slide. By golly, you and your microscope were right all along. You've convinced me and I hope your book will convince others. With best wishes and keep up the good work.*

Sincerely and free at last, Galileo

Since the publication of McCrone's book, a number of later books on the Shroud have thrown serious doubt on the Carbon-14 datings of the Shroud; so, his boasting of a victory over his fellow Shroud scientists is more than a bit ironic. The main problem with McCrone's thesis is that he seems to be the only scientist who has examined the Shroud microscopically and found detailed samples of paint on the Shroud fabric; all of the other scientists who fail to see thru their microscopes the evidence for sufficient paint fragments are, according to McCrone, either incompetent or dishonest; he even claims that only he himself had the right type of microscope to detect what no other scientist could see. This is amazing since there were several other scientists using microscopic devices. Further, McCrone utterly fails to answer 2 major problems pointed out to him : 1) He claims the image of Christ was painted on with a thin watercolor paint; yet, we know that, except for the blood areas on the Shroud, there is NO penetration of any liquid below the surface of any threads; he never answers this. 2) He claims a medieval artist painted the image with a "brush." Incredible, since there is no microscopic evidence of any DIRECTIONALITY of painting on the cloth--and that would be clearly evident. He doesn't answer this problem, either. Also, since the cloth is loaded with many details unseen to the naked eye (but only evident with special ultra-violet and enlarged photography)--the image is only fully clear when a negative photo of it is studied microscopically--McCrone cannot account for these hidden details in a cloth that existed centuries befor the invention of photography. Finally, the book is alarmingly dishonest: for example, in his brief bibliography, he entirely omits mention of Joseph Heller's book that demolishes McCrone's scandalous role in the Shroud investigation. This is a glaringly dishonest omission. McCrone cannot accept the Shroud as relating to Christ historically; in my opinion, it is from this basis that he achieves his unique analysis of the Shroud.

If you want to know the objective truth about the shroud read this book. This man has spent his life analyzing authentic and forged documents. Even before the carbon tests he gave the same date. Those that slam his integrity as a scientist are the ones not being objective.

Against all available scientific evidence from the STURP research team, Walter McCrone alone insisted that the image on the Shroud of Turin was painted. He refused to acknowledge that the image is comprised of an observable uniform surface discoloration of microfibrils without characteristics of painted cloth; variable marking or penetration of fabric, clumping of pigment, and lack of the three dimensional density and photo-negativity which characterize the Shroud image. And this scientific data says nothing about the matching facial image found on the back of the Shroud, or the anatomical exactitude (on a micro- and macroscopic level) and radiographic aspects of the image. McCrone's thesis is a "triumph" of atheistic "faith" over scientific evidence. He then took refuge in the inaccurate results of the 1988 carbon-14 dating, which, as we now know, was altered by the selection of a corner of the Shroud that had been patched with cotton in the medieval era. An updated summary of the scientific data on the Shroud can be found at [...]

UPDATE
McCrone is debunked, this book is now a scientific curiosity
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http://www.shroudstory.com/shroud-of-turin-for-journalists.htm

It is often reported that microscopist Walter McCrone proved that the images were painted. This is incorrect. McCrone, who examined 32 slides containing fibers from the cloth, found traces of iron oxide which he determined was "jewelers rouge." He concluded that the images were painted with this. McCrone also claimed to have found a concentration of mercury that he says was used to make vermilion paint used to paint the bloodstains.

But chemical investigation shows that small quantities of iron oxide particles are evenly distributed in both image and non-image areas and that the quantities are too small to form a visible image. The bloodstains are from real blood. Different scientists, working independently, conducted immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens that clearly show this. And several experts in forensic medicine and blood chemistry conclude that the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds to a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. See the peer reviewed Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal, Volume 14 (1981), pp.81-103.

In 1389, Pierre d'Arcis, the Bishop of Troyes, France, drafted a memorandum to Pope Clement VII of Avignon stating that the shroud was a painted forgery. However, there is no historical evidence that draft memorandum was ever finalized or sent. The account of a confession by a painter is second hand. Pierre claimed that his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers, conducted an inquest in which a painter had confessed to painting the shroud. The inquest is not in the historical records. The painter is not identified. Several other documents of the period challenge the veracity of the d'Arcis Memorandum. The historical conspectus suggests that the memorandum was part of a squabble about revenues from pilgrims visiting the nearby town of Lirey, where the shroud was kept, rather than Troyes.

It is all moot. Visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser­-microprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing show no evidence of such material in sufficient quantity to form any visible image. Moreover, it is well understood now, that the images are formed by a caramel-like substance within the otherwise clear coating of starch and polysaccharides on outer fibers.

McCrone continued to defend his position that the shroud was painted until his death in 2002. The McCrone Institute continues to carry material written by him on the organization's website, but it out of date. The McCrone Institute in Chicago can be contacted at 312-842-7100

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The old review (prior to the debunk)

He stands alone. Without being properly scrutinized by his scientific peers together involved in the Shroud of Turin Research Project(STURP).Walter C. McCrone published his own findings independently. He continues to stand against the crowd and declare himself entirely correct. And he has proved nothing. The Shroud of Turin remains as un-provable as a fake as well as elusively un-provable as the burial shroud of Christ. The fanatics of atheism and others declare it a forgery as fervently as true believers contend it an article of supernatural manifestation.

The book is a scientific snow job of facts, which seem plausible enough, an interesting read(I'll not take that away), but the Shroud deserves more than just microscopes. There is its extreme age, no other piece found similar to it, current inability to reproduce it, 3d negative form largely unknown in art until photography and so forth.

And even that microscope concluded nothing since STURP kicked Walter out for his gall (OPPS) and replaced him with another scientist, concluding no pigment related to paint, as Walter published, has been found on the image. As of this writing to my knowledge, no other scientist has confirmed Walter's results with independent experiments.

What the book does show is the danger of concentrating on one thing over the context of the larger environment all around it. No one can really say that Walter did not see what he actually saw. We do not actually know what was in his mind or actually what was being seen thru his lens. Walter is a specialist who studied only the dung of the elephant. It takes a whole team to help put the elephant together.

Want to know more about the Shroud? Got Google?

Science, properly understood, means proving a hyphothesis and having that proof replicated by one's peers. This was not done with McCrone's "proof" obtained only by McCrone using his "instruments". No verification by reputable laboratories equals taking McCrone's "proof" as a matter of faith ..........in McCrone. A fool's choice.

If the greatest microscopist of the modern age
tells you something is so, it takes a total fool to doubt him.
No one which any shread of scientific background would argue with his conclusions.
Plus didn't anyone stop tpo think that shourds wrap around a body and are not folded over it?
If you require proof to have faith then what you have isn't Faith at all.