Biggest Carbon Dating Mistake

Biggest Carbon Dating Mistake

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. 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.

-          Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit which participated in the 1988 Carbon 14 Dating of the Shroud. (March 2008)

[T]he age-dating process [in 1988] failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.

-          Robert Villarreal, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist who headed a team of nine scientists at LANL who examined material from the carbon 14 sampling region. (August 2008)

It may well go down as the biggest radiocarbon dating mistake in history; not because there is anything wrong with the measurement process (there may not have been); not because there is anything inherently wrong with carbon 14 dating (there is not); not because of shoddy sample taking (which indeed was shoddy); not because of red flags that should have raised serious questions (there were quite a few); and not even because basic tenets of archaeological dating were ignored by good scientists as was the case.

No, the reason is because, now, two decades later, whenever carbon 14 dating is discussed in high school or college classrooms, students like the student from Alaska are likely to raise a hand and ask some probing questions: What about the Shroud of Turin? Was it dated correctly? If not, how could so many scientists from so many reputable radiocarbon dating laboratories screw up so badly?