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Is the heterogeneity in the 1988 raw data a sign of a wrong date?

Asked 26 Oct 2026 by ·Part of When was the linen of the Shroud made?·3 answers·0·0 following
Most likely: the heterogeneity reflects ordinary laboratory and pretreatment differences and does not change the medieval…Ahead on the evidence, not yet confirmed. It needs two reviews to be accepted.

Where it stands

Three answers have been proposed. The heterogeneity reflects ordinary laboratory and pretreatment differences and does not change the medieval… leads, with evidence 1 for: partly supported by its tests. Two are still possible.

Why it matters

The raw measurements released in 2017 show the Shroud subsamples are less consistent than the controls⁠[1]⁠[2]. Whether this is noise, contamination or a sampling artefact decides whether re-dating is needed.

Answers 3

Evidence: 1 for
Most likely
Evidence: 2 for
Disputed
None of these.
Not tested enough to call either way
Evidence: none yet
Still possible

History

  1. Di Lazzaro et al. puts forward: contaminants unevenly removed across the strip biased the dates.
  2. Di Lazzaro et al.: none of the reanalyses proposes an alternative date.For: The heterogeneity reflects ordinary laboratory and pretreatment differences and does not change the medieval…
  3. Di Lazzaro et al.: a monotone spatial variation of subsample ages.For: Contaminants unevenly removed across the strip biased the dates.
  4. Walsh & Schwalbe: an approximately linear dependence of dates on sample position.For: Contaminants unevenly removed across the strip biased the dates.
  5. Asked on this site
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