Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud [Hardcover]

I have always been fascinated by the Turin Shroud. When it was finally carbon dated and sadly proved to be a fake (or is it a fake, even now there are doubts?) I felt immense sadness even though I am not of the Christian faith.
In the early 1970s onwards Professor Grove set about with a group of fellow scientists, religious zealots, curious hangers-on and an assortment of faithful doubters to use this new technique in a scientific manner to prove the worth of carbon dating. And what better than a piece of historical enigma to use this new discovery on other than the Turin Shroud?
This book follows Professor Grove through the many years of negotiation it took before the Vatican finally allowed the controversial experiment to go ahead.
In parts this book is highly technical but Professor Grove manages to make himself and the theory behind Carbon dating understood. He is never sentimental but I picked up on a quiet unspoken faith he has in both the scientific and the religious and he comes across as man who somehow manages to balance these diametrically opposed modes of thought in a coherent and sensible way..
This is both a good read, surprisingly quite humorous in parts as well as being a technical masterpiece which anyone with a leaning toward academia will appreciate. Worth getting out from your local library if the cost is too prohibitive.

If it weren't for its considerable entertainment value, I wouldn't give this book more than one star. Given that it has been written by an academic person, one ought be able to expect from the author some minimal standards of objectivity. Unfortunately, from almost A to Z this book does not meet the requirements. Beginning with the quite untrue statement in the foreword (de facto refuted by Gove in his 1998 book "From Hiroshima to the Iceman"), that the STURP group (Shroud of Turin Project, the US scientists that undertook an investigation on the Shroud in 1978) had tried in vain to block the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud before attempting to jump on the bandwaggon, right up to the fantasy allegation in the last chapter that Turin has arranged for the secret dating of an additional piece of the Shroud in the aftermath of the test of 1988.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but it simply must be said that the author of this book has dwelled all too often on the level of plain polemics.

His judgement on the work done by STURP, for instance, and on their motivations, is highly one-sided. Would STURP ever have bothered to resort to the services of a Walter McCrone if they had been hell-bent from the outset on proving the Shroud genuine?

What he says about STURP as a group, may be true for some of its members, but even there Gove resorts to exaggeration and distortion. Thus he calls the author of "Verdict on the Shroud" an "abrasive character", on account of a clash they had in Turin in 1978, conveniently forgetting that it was he himself who opened the hostilities. Also he is scoffing about the alleged statement in that book of there being a chance of 83 millions to One that the Shroud is the genuine shroud of Christ, not comprehending (or not wanting to comprehend) that the calculation alluded to (meant as a rough estimate) does NOT constitute a general probability statement, but applies only in the case of the theoretical eventuality that the Turin Shroud represents a genuine first century crucifixion, which in itself is quite improbable from a purely theoretical point of vue.

What appears most irritating to me is that one cannot even rely on Mr. Gove when he is dealing with his own field of interest. His comments on the preliminary C14 tests of 1983/84 run be the British Museum are just as biased as the rest of the book (though the other way around), clearly glossing over the reality. Not just one single outlier result has come out of these tests, as Gove seems to be indicating, but as many as four of them (cf. "Radocarbon", Vol. 28, 2A, 1986), plus a number of other unsatisfactory results. Of course, it would have been quite disastrous to reveal the whole truth!

Concerning the dating of the Shroud itself, Goves "AD 1325 plus/minus 33 years" (with 68% confidence) is quite at odds with the figures given in the official report on it in "Nature" (Vol. 337, February 1989): "AD 1273-1288". As if Gove had attempted to close the gap between the REAL mean date - 1281, NOT 1325!! - to the alleged first historical appearance of the Shroud in 1353... Does this not, to quote Gove in his own words about STURP, "suggest something less that scientific dispassion"?

Historiographer, Switzerland

I had to write a review if only to correct the record. Harry Gove has written a highly entertaining book about the Carbon Dating or the Shroud ostensibly but it is far more a record of Harry Gove's desire to use the Shroud dating as a poster child for AMS (Accellerated Mass Spectrometry). In the process he manages to come across as a single minded and determined individual with a very large ax to grind.

He trashes STURP as "true believers" whatever those are, and fails to note the contradictions in his own positions as he careens through the book. Someone who wants to find out something about the Shroud of Turin or even much about AMS should go elsewhere. This is a book all about Harry Gove on a quest and he trashes anyone that disagrees with him.

I like to keep this book next to The Rape of the Turin Shroud by William Meacham which is a useful counterbalance to Gove's venom.

If you are interested in this fascinating time in the history of the Shroud of Turin than you can't miss the book. But don't buy it expecting anything like impartiality or dispassionate objectivity. It is a book about Gove on a mission. It's fun and entertaining but what you find out is how Gove judges everyone regardless of whether he has any competence to make the judgment or not -- usually he doesn't.

Nevertheless a fun, entertaining and riotous frolic through the complex ways of science and religion in a skeptical era.

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