And why it matters:
The most basic level of trust in science is trust that the reported experiment actually happened. Joe Hilgard described his efforts to report scientific misconduct at the level of fabricated trials, and found that the journals mostly weren’t interested. Moreover, the fraudulent researchers would simply change their tactics once he pointed out their fraud. For example, after Hilgard pointed out that a trial with over 3,000 subjects was unlikely to have occurred, the researcher in question now sets his sample sizes at a believable couple hundred.
Another level of trust is the idea that a citation to a source accurately reports the information there. In my experience, it is the norm, rather than the exception, for cited claims in popular science books and review papers to misstate the claims of their sources. The popular science book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, for example, was eviscerated for its misleading citations by Alexey Guzey in a review, but this did not result in any institutional action toward Walker or public acknowledgement of the flaws in the book. Walker was defended as promoting an important message, even if he got a few things wrong in shady ways. (One reviewer, aware of the Guzey criticisms, said that Walker can be forgiven for his errors, because his exuberance comes from the right place.)
The term “pious fraud” is usually used to refer to religious people who knowingly promote hoaxes while believing in the underlying religious message of the hoax; it was a term commonly used in the skeptical movement of the 1990s to refer to people like stigmatics, faith healers, and the creator of the Shroud of Turin. Similar to pious frauds, researchers who believe in the truth of the message of “sleep is good for you” or “social behavior is automatic” or the like may produce or promote silly findings they know to be false or meaningless, because these findings support an important message.
Sarah Perry, “How trust undermines science” at Works in Progress (September 14, 2021)
And more. Actually, there is probably better evidence for the Shroud of Turin than for many claims made in science journals today — if only because the claims must weather much more skepticism.
Ends vs means is a complex balance, with no automatic rule.
If the end is good, I’m not bothered by trivial or false arguments along the way. False arguments or exaggerated claims aren’t hurting anyone.
But a good end DOESN’T justify massive harm and murder. The current “pandemic” is permanently ruining ALL PEOPLE ON EARTH, and killing millions unnecessarily, to SUPPOSEDLY save the lives of a small number of people who were already dying and couldn’t be saved anyway. That’s a poor balance of means and ends.
True. But because it has a religious aspect, the Shroud is considered a fraud. As they said:
Supposedly, there is a completely unknown, unidentified “creator” of the Shroud who innovated an artistic technique (3D imaging) not used for centuries and which could only be seen in a photographic negative – without using paint – and he or she did all this by completely hiding his identity even from family, friends, artistic rivals and people who wanted to debunk the Shroud during his lifetime. No clue of who this “creator” is – nothing. The person didn’t collaborate with anyone – no partners, artistic sponsors. The Church knew nothing of this artist. Nobody leaked out the secret. No notebooks or artistic lab materials found to explain the process. No practice images found – only the one perfect Shroud. Nobody has receipts for the sale of the Palestinian linen used. The person didn’t want any money or credit for this artistic “creation” that is kept and honored as one of the greatest treasures of human civilization even in the 21st century?
It’s sad to see people who claim to respect science, simply incapable of analyzing an artifact correctly, for reasons of bias and prejudice.
Not only that but the creator of the Shroud provided us with the basis of a Theory of Everything – apparently. The two halves of the image were also alleged to have been separated by an “event horizon” according to one scientific expert which suggests there could have been a black hole in the vicinity when it was created. It’s not clear how the Shroud – or the Earth come to that – would have survived the immense gravitational forces involved
The most authoritative site for the Shroud of Turin is http://www.shroud.com
Nobody has a clue as to how the Shroud happened.
I just realize that the OP has this same link.
Seversky
Darwin thought bears turned into whales by …
As you point out, a single absurdity offered by an unqualified crackpot should be enough to eliminate evolutionary theory entirely.
As to this comment from Sarah Perry’s article:
I did not see any references listed in Sarah Perry’s article so I guess that she is just relying on her memory to claim that the Shroud is a ‘hoax’.
My guess is that Sarah Perry does not know that the carbon dating of the Shroud in 1988, (that had dated the Shroud to the Medieval period, and that had supposedly proven that the Shroud was a medieval hoax), has now been overturned.
In 2000 Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford put forth the hypothesis that the corner of the Shroud that was tested via carbon dating was a part of the Shroud that had been subject to expert medieval reweaving in the 1500’s.
Their hypothesis had much historical, and photographic, evidence behind it. Their historical, and photographic, evidence was then subsequently scientifically confirmed by chemical analysis in 2004 by none other than Raymond Rogers, the lead chemist on the STURP team.
Rogers passed away shortly after publishing that paper, but his work was ultimately verified by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
This following is the finding from the researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory which confirmed Rogers’ findings:
And here is a video from Robert Villarreal, friend of the late Raymond Rodgers. Villarreal is one of the scientists from the Los Alamos laboratory:
Thus, the fact that a false age was shown by the 1988 carbon testing, and as far as the scientific evidence is concerned, has now been overturned.
On top of that, Giulio Fanti narrowed the age for the Shroud down much closer to the first century than Rodgers, via chemistry alone, was able to do,
Thus, in so far as Sarah Perry was operating under the false assumption that the carbon dating had proven the Shroud to be the work of a Medieval forger, her claim that the Shroud is a hoax collapses in on itself.
The Shroud, contrary to what Sarah Perry, (and Seversky) may prefer to believe about it, is simply not so easily dismissed.
The Shroud, despite repeated attempts by Atheists trying to prove that it is a hoax, simply refuses to be ‘explained away’.
Much more could be said about the authenticity of the Shroud, and the implications therein of Jesus defeating death, but suffice it for now to say that those who claim the Shroud is a hoax have got a lot of ‘explaining to do’
Basically, we have a clothe with a photographic negative image on it that was made well before photography was even invented. Moreover, the photographic negative image has a 3-Dimensional holographic nature to its image that was somehow encoded within the photographic negative well before holography was even known about. Moreover, even with our present day technology, we still cannot replicated the image in all its detail.
?My question to atheists is this, if you truly believe some mad genius forger in the middle ages made this image, then please pray tell why did this mad genius save all his genius for this supposed forgery alone and not for, say, inventing photography itself since he surely would have required mastery of photography to pull off the forgery? Not to mention mastery of laser holography? Moreover, why did this hypothetical mad super-genius destroy all of his scientific instruments that he would have had to invent in order to make the image? Leonardo da Vinci would not have been worthy to tie the shoe laces of such a hypothetical mad super genius!
Seversky
There are not “two halves” of the image – there are two images.
Front and back. Supine and prone.
Get with it.