Is science at odds with philosophy?

[Mountainmike]

Because you know I'm right.

Perhaps you might consider that self image is why nobody is keen to help you! It is fascinating. If you bought marinos book you would see it is exactly how the daters behaved to all of STURP, and to pontifical academy. Rude to the point of offensive. It is also the hubris that led to their failure.

And as a point of note. I did not scan it. "back in the day" to use a horrible american expression, you got libraries to scan things for you - mail order- and "back in the day" their repro was terrible. These were early days of scanners too. The copy I have is more readbable, but the combination of scans is very poor. I dare say if you paid for a copy from Biblical Archeology now, it would be better. Strontium levels are explicit in the sudarium papers, but clearly they are visible in those at the right atomic weight.

 

[Mountainmike]

Did you actually read my last post? On who scanned it and when?
Most of what you comment on is a caricature of me that is just in your head.
I posted it only to prove I have it. One of many papers on the shroud (you say i dont have and dont read)

I've got to say the "scan" you put up in HILARIOUS! I have no idea how someone could scan something SO BADLY at SUCH LOW RESOLUTION and expect anyone to even be able to read it!

Seriously dude, this is EMBARRASSING!

Can you not operate your own scanner? Isn't that part of having a 4 sigma IQ? You can operate a modern scanner????

YIKES!

I would love to discuss those mass specs but gosh ahmighty I can't even read the labels!

When you're not saving the world with your super-secret military work in GMP biopharma labs, maybe you could learn how to set the RESOLUTION on your scanner.

LOL.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Back in the day when we wanted a confirmatory report on the authenticity of a holy relic, we wouldn't use a scanner, we would send a pre-paid courier to the appropriate monastery with a blank parchment and the monks would carefully copy and illuminate the manuscript after returning from their daily self-flagellation in the local village where they smacked boards against their foreheads.

 

[Mountainmike]

You may mock, but It has nothing to do with the subject matter.
How old are you blaster?

I am talking the reality of obtaining reprints of articles before the web got started, from such as british lending library (who acted as a source for many other collections) and such as wellcome trust. Some but not all were available through tame university links. But then I was sourcing a lot of papers at the time.

Strange is it not, that my false caricature who is not supposed to look at papers knows that, whilst another is getting rude because I will not give him a paper for free, stuff that I paid for, and he seems to have no idea of the realities of that age.

It is also interesting in that one specific case that the reprints of the same graphs in Ian Philips book are also blurred, which makes me wonder whether there is no physical copy left, and all are supplying that article from a badly distorted original fiche. Fiche was one of the main media for compacting information, the problem was that it was a photogrpahic process,and every now and then individual pages or an entire article were blurred in the transfer to fiche.

I am also guessing not many of us on here are old enough to remember those days when information was hard to get and expensive. The days when archives were primarily kept on fiche. All university libraries had fiche viewers. Do they still? I doubt it.

It is a fascinating thing: the face price of the biblical archeology issue was $4 way back then. The front cover says it. That is a lot in todays money. So this idea all information comes free is a canard of a modern age. For sure in the modern age information is easy. It is still not free, nor can it be. It costs money to create and disseminate.
Nature magazine is not free.

Disinformation comes free, true enough. Read wiki, skeptic inquirer or similar.

Back in the day when we wanted a confirmatory report on the authenticity of a holy relic, we wouldn't use a scanner, we would send a pre-paid courier to the appropriate monastery with a blank parchment and the monks would carefully copy and illuminate the manuscript after returning from their daily self-flagellation in the local village where they smacked boards against their foreheads.

 

[Hans Blaster]

You may mock, but It has nothing to do with the subject matter.
How old are you blaster?

First. Thank you for addressing me by my noun, rather than my possessive.

Second. The stated age in my profile is roughly correct (+/- 5 years). (Though I was not actually born the day the UNIX clock starts.)

I am talking the reality of obtaining reprints of articles before the web got started, from such as british lending library (who acted as a source for many other collections) and such as wellcome trust. Some but not all were available through tame university links. But then I was sourcing a lot of papers at the time.

I have a whole file cabinet filled with articles I photocopied from bound journals back in the day. Most were in the department library (at no charge to grad students) but some were in the main library or from my undergrad days. I only needed to request one obscure conference proceedings from Inter Library Loan as our university library was fairly complete on the subject matters I needed. (I have also been subscribed to the daily subject matter email of new abstracts from the arXiv [formerly x x x. lanl. gov] for about 25 years now.)

 

[Mountainmike]

The world changed dramatically in the late eighties/ nineties.
The early to mid eighties obscure stuff was much harder to get.
These reprints are earlier than that.

Do you even remember looking at "fiche" reprints?

I left academia early ( by which I mean I didnt become the perennial student doing postdocs) so most information sources in industry were paid from then on.
It is perhaps why I know the cost of stuff.

Being in a couple of university based companies helped during those periods.

Own up Hans. When did you lose your "unix" virginity, and write your first programs in C?. I actually remember unix 4.2...

First. Thank you for addressing me by my noun, rather than my possessive.

Second. The stated age in my profile is roughly correct (+/- 5 years). (Though I was not actually born the day the UNIX clock starts.)

I have a whole file cabinet filled with articles I photocopied from bound journals back in the day. Most were in the department library (at no charge to grad students) but some were in the main library or from my undergrad days. I only needed to request one obscure conference proceedings from Inter Library Loan as our university library was fairly complete on the subject matters I needed. (I have also been subscribed to the daily subject matter email of new abstracts from the arXiv [formerly x x x. lanl. gov] for about 25 years now.)

 

[Hans Blaster]

The world changed dramatically in the late eighties/ nineties.
The early to mid eighties obscure stuff was much harder to get.
These reprints are earlier than that.

I wasn't doing research in the early/mid 80s, I was programming computers. But if I had been the main journals would have been available to me at the same university libraries I would later use. Photocopying might have been a bit more expensive relatively speaking, but nothing like 20 or 30 years prior to that.

Do you even remember looking at "fiche" reprints?

I've used fiche, but not for science. Like I said, we had a full set of the relevant journals in the department, even the Soviet ones.

I left academia early ( by which I mean I didnt become the perennial student doing postdocs) so most information sources in industry were paid from then on.

Post-docs are NOT students (perpetual or otherwise). They are junior, professional researchers with student loans and pension plans.

It is perhaps why I know the cost of stuff.

Again, the obsession with the cost of things. Being more costly doesn't mean it's better. Nor does the difficulty of obtaining it.

 

[Mountainmike]

Again, the obsession with the cost of things. Being more costly doesn't mean it's better. Nor does the difficulty of obtaining it.

I never said it was better or worse.
But in a company founded on your own money, many magazine subscriptions beyond a core niche, can become eye watering, so pay on demand is how you access information. The cost of it is something perpetual university dwellers never seem to recognise. They would if they paid with their own money.

Anyway, answer me this: I asked as a late edit in your earlier post!
When did you lose your "unix" virginity, and also write your first programs in C?.
A world of vi, grep and even yacc! For me around 80-81 I actually remember unix 4.2. Xenix used on some of the micros was buggy.

An amusing contradiction in your last post.
Post-docs are NOT students...... with student loans....

 

[Hans Blaster]

I never said it was better or worse.
But in a company founded on your own money, many magazine subscriptions beyond a core niche, can become eye watering, so pay on demand is how you access information. The cost of it is something perpetual university dwellers never seem to recognise. They would if they paid with their own money.

I think we finally clear the difference. My university library had the physics journals I needed because that's what we did in our department -- physics.

If your company was subscribing to materials irrelevant to you work, then that was bad financial management. You *should* have dropped your archeology and history journals.

(The university probably did have those journals, because people in *other* departments were doing those things.)

Anyway, answer me this: I asked as a late edit in your earlier post!
When did you lose your "unix" virginity, and also write your first programs in C?.

A world of vi, grep and even yacc! For me around 80-81 I actually remember unix 4.2. Xenix used on some of the micros was buggy.

I first used UNIX at around age 20. (I started programming non-UNIX mini-computers 10 years earlier.) I've used Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, NeXTSTEP, Cray Unix, and even that newcomer -- Linux.

I've never written a program in C, I prefer languages that are better at formula translation and count from 1 like normal people. I use grep almost everyday and have used vi since my last post.

An amusing contradiction in your last post.
Post-docs are NOT students...... with student loans....

No contradiction. Perhaps I should have added "payments". The loan payments come after you get the thing you borrowed money for: car loan payments after you start driving, mortgage payments after you move in, and student loan payments after you graduate.

 

[Mountainmike]

Why on earth do you assume as a company we subscribed to "archeology" journals. They were only ever a private and personal interest.

I have made the other point clear. In a world of math modelling/ control/ signal processing/ imaging/ laser/ specialist devices/ networking (doing it long before the web) all sorts. There were not only a lot of core technology issues to cover, there were also many application issues in which all the target industry journals mattered too, also discipline issues like safety/quality/reliability pertinent to the target process, let alone industry. You could not possibly subscribe to the lot. Going to conferences costs serious money if you are putting your hand in your own pocket for it.

Spare a thought for how the other half lives.

As for C, yes, I was far more in analytical languages such as the Fortrans, pascals and APLs (ever heard of it for modelling? One of my degree projects was entirey done in APL! But there is also the problem. Real time math in applications cannot afford big compiler overheads and inefficiencies. C was low enough to make device handling and data structures more programmer friendly whilst not incurring massive overheads. A lot of it was interfaces into custom hardware. Matrix inverses and transforms were done in custom efficienc math, not using standard library functions. Most young people do not realise that the first image processing systems we used were done with computers that could hold a whole image. A PC or indeed 808x general structures could not. It all needed to be external hardware. Just to do fast math.

I think we finally clear the difference. My university library had the physics journals I needed because that's what we did in our department -- physics.

If your company was subscribing to materials irrelevant to you work, then that was bad financial management. You *should* have dropped your archeology and history journals.

(The university probably did have those journals, because people in *other* departments were doing those things.)



I first used UNIX at around age 20. (I started programming non-UNIX mini-computers 10 years earlier.) I've used Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, NeXTSTEP, Cray Unix, and even that newcomer -- Linux.

I've never written a program in C, I prefer languages that are better at formula translation and count from 1 like normal people. I use grep almost everyday and have used vi since my last post.



No contradiction. Perhaps I should have added "payments". The loan payments come after you get the thing you borrowed money for: car loan payments after you start driving, mortgage payments after you move in, and student loan payments after you graduate.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Why on earth do you assume as a company we subscribed to "archeology" journals. They were only ever a private and personal interest.

You keep complaining about universities just having all these things needed for research and how it costs you amateurs so much to acquire them and simultaneously trying to make your private commercial concern (see below) seem so much more virtuous. Pardon me if I can't keep your rants all straight.

I have made the other point clear. In a world of math modelling/ control/ signal processing/ imaging/ laser/ specialist devices/ networking (doing it long before the web) all sorts. There were not only a lot of core technology issues to cover, there were also many application issues in which all the target industry journals mattered too, also discipline issues like safety/quality/reliability pertinent to the target process, let alone industry. You could not possibly subscribe to the lot. Going to conferences costs serious money if you are putting your hand in your own pocket for it.

Universities are in the research business (and of course education), they have research tools including libraries, mass spectrometers, research animal colonies, machine and glass shops, and any other sort of needed equipment and infrastructure.

You post as if universities, their departments, and individual research projects don't have budgets, they certainly do.

If you business needs something either figure out how to pass that cost to your customers or do without, it's exactly what everyone else has to do.

Spare a thought for how the other half lives.

Amateur scholars or for-profit businesses?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I keep hoping opdrey will keep to science.
I give lots of last chances. Sadly now the word lack of “ honesty “ was used , it’s time to call time.

What do you make of the honesty of someone who keeps making promises but doesn't keep them?

What do you make of an important paper in which the data from lab books was “ modified by an unknown process” to arrive at what was published? That is beyond dispute. An FOI proved it. A paper in which a critical standard deviation doesn’t even match the rigged data they did publish. That so happened to make it more homogenous!

The data originally was not homogenous ( so would be rejected as a measure of anything) just “ happened” to be made homogenous in the paper which ensured the future of AMS at the expense of truth about the shroud?

Was it incompetence or fraud?

Do you trust any date they give after that, to anything they say about the shroud?

I have no idea what 'important paper' you're talking about.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I've spent my life with programmable scientific calculators but I never really felt comfortable programming. Even today my programming skills are modest. I always loved the HP's because they were (formerly) built like bricks and no one would "borrow" one from you because it was RPN only. When I was in grad school in the late 80's I took a risk and took a p chem class (something most people do in undergrad but I was a geology grad and it wasn't necessary, but I felt I should do more of it since I wanted to be in geochem). My old algebraic calc died and I decided I wanted to finally get an HP. I didn't pay my electricity bill for a couple months and dodged a few other bills to scrape together the $$$$ for an HP 11C. So I was trying to teach myself how to use RPN simultaneously while taking p-chem which was easily the most disorientingly difficult chem class for me. Oh, yeah, and since I was in grad school if I slipped up and got a really bad grade it would have been a near-disaster. Luckily I slipped through. And I still have my blessed 11C to this day. WONDERFUL machine.

When I was in undergrad in the early 80's computers were just coming to the fore and in geology where I was at there was no requirement whatsoever to get programming skills. But I took a BASIC class and yea we used the Commodore PETs. Weird, weird machines. Ugly things too.

Yeah, those PETS were weird - the keyboard layout was something else.

I still use Quartic's RealCalc Scientific Calculator on my mobile because it's so like the HP6x range.

 

[Mountainmike]

I have no idea what 'important paper' you're talking about.

I am not sure I have the energy for the torrent of abuse that comes with reporting the manipulated RC dating , which now seems to be the ONLY piece of information sceptics look at. But I will repeat it because it is Not just AN important paper, it is the ONLY important paper as far as sceptics are concerned.

And it was a piece of wilfully misleading junk!

1/ In 1989 Damon et al, published the supposed shroud RC dating in nature, based on 3 labs testing parts of one sample and giving a date range. Now that’s all sceptics ever talk about. The numbers were misrepresented as homogenous , statistically significant ,and established a 95% dating bound. But it was a fraud.

( now Lets ignore all the other controversy, about how the daters ignored all the protocols & a lot of red flags , or the fact the samples were different stuff from the shroud body , or the fact other information. makes those dates unlikely/ or impossible ….)

Let’s just stick to numbers…

2/ for years other researchers had tried to get hold of raw data and remnant samples from labs and met a stonewall. Van Haelst had already noted oddities in what they reported, which is why he requested it. It turns out halls of Oxford took it all home and into retirement. Dodging scrutiny?

3/ finally a researcher called Casabianca used legal force - an FOI- to get the results from the British museum.( Tite of the museum - you may recollect - was the one appointed to ensure good behaviour and to collect results for the final paper, but he had moved on, so the defences were down by then)

4/ imagine the consternation when it was revealed the numbers were fiddled and that all involved had been misleading the public!
To use the “ polite diplomatic” words of the paper I will now reference what they said : ( probably trying to avoid getting sued)
The figures “showed that some of the original Shroud date measurements reported by the three laboratories to the British Museum were modified from their original ‘raw’ laboratory values and transformed into their published form using an unstated methodology.”
Such a polite way to say fiddled!

An instructive inter-laboratory comparison: The 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin - ScienceDirect

5/ The reality is the labs figures were not homogenous , so there was no date they could safely report ( the date is certainly void if done under GMP)

A truer reflection showed a big date gradient of 100 years a cm. That is not just a detail. It invalidates the test completely. It says either the process or samples are not consistent enough to date. (And it is entirely consistent with a repair of modern material (Rogers) , who detected cotton, a different type of linen& dye )and it also explains the Uv fluorescence.

The truth is of course fascinating. The AMS worked fine but the daters failed. So it would have wrecked the perceived reliability of AMS if they reported it. So they fudged it instead.

6/ It also says something about peer review. One of the reported standard deviations in nature didn’t even match the fiddled data. It was literally plucked out of thin air to make the published data homogenous. The reviewers missed it. I don’t blame them. But it proves peer review is not a catchall.

7/ It was tites job to make sure it all added up, but even an Italian stats lab that was supposed to check figures got ditched along with most of the protocol.
The protocols were argued for years in international meetings. The protocols safeguards , and red flags , including involvement of a stats lab were all ignored.

Did you know about the fiddle? Opdrey didn’t. Most sceptics don’t.

Are you happy with “unknown transforms from lab book to paper”? I am not.
Data does not “ transform itself” without “help” It wasted an entire decade.

If only they had either followed the protocol OR reported what they actually found. They did neither.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I am not sure I have the energy for the torrent of abuse that comes with reporting the manipulated RC dating , which now seems to be the ONLY piece of information sceptics look at. But I will repeat it because it is Not just AN important paper, it is the ONLY important paper as far as sceptics are concerned.

And it was a piece of wilfully misleading junk!

1/ In 1989 Damon et al, published the supposed shroud RC dating in nature, based on 3 labs testing parts of one sample and giving a date range. Now that’s all sceptics ever talk about. The numbers were misrepresented as homogenous , statistically significant ,and established a 95% dating bound. But it was a fraud.

( now Lets ignore all the other controversy, about how the daters ignored all the protocols & a lot of red flags , or the fact the samples were different stuff from the shroud body , or the fact other information. makes those dates unlikely/ or impossible ….)

Let’s just stick to numbers…

2/ for years other researchers had tried to get hold of raw data and remnant samples from labs and met a stonewall. Van Haelst had already noted oddities in what they reported, which is why he requested it. It turns out halls of Oxford took it all home and into retirement. Dodging scrutiny?

3/ finally a researcher called Casabianca used legal force - an FOI- to get the results from the British museum.( Tite of the museum - you may recollect - was the one appointed to ensure good behaviour and to collect results for the final paper, but he had moved on, so the defences were down by then)

4/ imagine the consternation when it was revealed the numbers were fiddled and that all involved had been misleading the public!
To use the “ polite diplomatic” words of the paper I will now reference what they said : ( probably trying to avoid getting sued)
The figures “showed that some of the original Shroud date measurements reported by the three laboratories to the British Museum were modified from their original ‘raw’ laboratory values and transformed into their published form using an unstated methodology.”
Such a polite way to say fiddled!

An instructive inter-laboratory comparison: The 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin - ScienceDirect

5/ The reality is the labs figures were not homogenous , so there was no date they could safely report ( the date is certainly void if done under GMP)

A truer reflection showed a big date gradient of 100 years a cm. That is not just a detail. It invalidates the test completely. It says either the process or samples are not consistent enough to date. (And it is entirely consistent with a repair of modern material (Rogers) , who detected cotton, a different type of linen& dye )and it also explains the Uv fluorescence.

The truth is of course fascinating. The AMS worked fine but the daters failed. So it would have wrecked the perceived reliability of AMS if they reported it. So they fudged it instead.

6/ It also says something about peer review. One of the reported standard deviations in nature didn’t even match the fiddled data. It was literally plucked out of thin air to make the published data homogenous. The reviewers missed it. I don’t blame them. But it proves peer review is not a catchall.

7/ It was tites job to make sure it all added up, but even an Italian stats lab that was supposed to check figures got ditched along with most of the protocol.
The protocols were argued for years in international meetings. The protocols safeguards , and red flags , including involvement of a stats lab were all ignored.

Did you know about the fiddle? Opdrey didn’t. Most sceptics don’t.

Are you happy with “unknown transforms from lab book to paper”? I am not.
Data does not “ transform itself” without “help” It wasted an entire decade.

If only they had either followed the protocol OR reported what they actually found. They did neither.

OK, so there was a link in the middle of that screed - was that the 'important paper' you were referring to?

 

[Mountainmike]

OK, so there was a link in the middle of that screed - was that the 'important paper' you were referring to?

There are two key papers and also a backstory.

1/ is the paper all sceptics treat as gospel, from nature, the “ dating” paper, that pretends the data from three labs were homogeneous and therefore valid. I am not giving more air time to that, now it is discredited. Suffice to say even published data contained irregularities.

After years of the labs refusing to release raw data or samples ( despite many attempts). Casabianca uses legal force to get release of all data held. Y British Museum who oversaw the process Casabiancas published that data showing lack of homogeneity and therefore voids the earlier test results.

2/ is the important paper showing the samples were not only inhomogeneous but there was a steep date gradient across the samples. It invalidates any dating , for the sample entire , but is clearly consistent with a repair.

It is Most important for highlighting the quote I use from it:
“that some of the original Shroud date measurements reported by the three laboratories to the British Museum were modified from their original ‘raw’ laboratory values and transformed into their published form using an unstated methodology.”

A polite way to say the dating paper was fiddled! It was the one I chose to show opdrey the dating was fiddled , when he didn’t seem to believe it. The difference between us is opdrey prefers to consider it accidental, when the man in charge allows false data to be published that happens to say the tests were valid
( homogeneous) when they were invalid ( not homogeneous, so irrelevant).

It was deemed so important in the planning to get it right that history records the intention to bring in an Italian metrology laboratory to validate calculation. Like much of the protocol it was quietly forgotten. You only have to read the correspondence to see the dating was done in bad faith.

 

[Mountainmike]

Digging in the central core of the thread, I am fascinated by this:

The first quote is very good, sums up science precisely.

All scientific claims are provisional. Read them with an implicit "Nature/reality behaves as if..."
.

Spot on.
But For the very same reason I find this a problem….

However complete the explanations and models of our observations science might provide…. .

I dispute that a pattern In observation IS an “ explanation” at a fundamental level of “why it does what it does “ rather than just a “ codification” of the pattern ie “what it is normally observed to do”

The distinction matters in ascribing a cause. So the later reference to “ miraculous” is changing frame of reference since science cannot speak of why, or assign “the blame” if you like.

Analogy.

An aeroplane can now fly itself and land at an airport.
A pilot can do the same. All you have is flight path and behaviour to distinguish them, and the likelihood is you cannot do that!
You cannot say from those , whether the aeroplane was designed or not , or the extent to which the designer and/or pilot decided to make life easy by making some of the behaviour automatic ,whilst at other times it can be flown on manual.
The automatic behaviour is what we call “ natural”

All you can do is look for aberrations that say “ this is not normal” ,when it looks like the pilot took over. Like when a German wings pilot flew a plane into the side of a hill!! The corollary is also true. Just because it does the usual, doesn’t mean it is on automatic, it can still be on manual, flown by pilot ( or supernatural if you like ). All you have is observations of behaviour, not cause.

Science codifies the observed behaviour not underlying “ explanation” ie cause, and it cannot say whether it is a “ who “ or an automaton doing it, or whether a “ who” designed the automaton.

Science cannot say if it will do the same tomorrow if the pilot decides to take over for a bit. All science has is a codification of a pattern of what it normally does. Science cannot say what exists beyond what interacts with observations, indeed it cannot say what exists, only that “ nature behaves as if…” your first statement, I entirely agree with!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Digging in the central core of the thread, I am fascinated by this:

The first quote is very good, sums up science precisely.

All scientific claims are provisional. Read them with an implicit "Nature/reality behaves as if..."

Spot on.
But For the very same reason I find this a problem….

However complete the explanations and models of our observations science might provide...

I dispute that a pattern In observation IS an “ explanation” at a fundamental level of “why it does what it does “ rather than just a “ codification” of the pattern ie “what it is normally observed to do”

I agree. Hypotheses and theories are explanations for observed patterns.

Science codifies the observed behaviour not underlying “ explanation” ie cause, and it cannot say whether it is a “ who “ or an automaton doing it, or whether a “ who” designed the automaton.

All science has is a codification of a pattern of what it normally does. Science cannot say what exists beyond what interacts with observations, indeed it cannot say what exists, only that “ nature behaves as if…” your first statement, I entirely agree with!

Science codifies observed behaviour in terms of proximate causes that have deeper explanations (causes) that form part of a hierarchical web or framework of causal explanatory knowledge. As I have said numerous times on these forums, the fundamental level of causality in that framework is always brute fact - that's what makes it fundamental.

Currently, the fundamental causal explanation is quantum fields. If the framework of knowledge they support is potentially capable of explaining the phenomena we observe, we have no need to invoke magical, superstitious, or supernatural influences, which have no practical utility beyond emotional appeal.

If phenomena appear to be inexplicable within the framework, the first step is to verify the observation. Human observation - perception, memory, recall, etc. - is notoriously and demonstrably unreliable beyond providing pointers to phenomena for investigation, and experience tells us that deception is also a distinct possibility, so scientific methodologies have been developed to minimize such impacts on investigations.

Unfortunately, many seemingly inexplicable reports & claims cannot be satisfactorily investigated due to a lack of scientific record or control at some point. Sometimes the only observable pattern is an association with particular belief systems or worldviews that are untestable, unsupported by evidence, and orthogonal or contrary to the framework of established knowledge. Given that many of these belief systems make different, sometimes conflicting, claims of such inexplicable phenomena, it seems reasonable to assign a high probability to these claims being a product of those belief systems rather than accurate reports of objectively real phenomena. YMMV.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

There are two key papers and also a backstory.

1/ is the paper all sceptics treat as gospel, from nature, the “ dating” paper, that pretends the data from three labs were homogeneous and therefore valid. I am not giving more air time to that, now it is discredited. Suffice to say even published data contained irregularities.

After years of the labs refusing to release raw data or samples ( despite many attempts). Casabianca uses legal force to get release of all data held. Y British Museum who oversaw the process Casabiancas published that data showing lack of homogeneity and therefore voids the earlier test results.

2/ is the important paper showing the samples were not only inhomogeneous but there was a steep date gradient across the samples. It invalidates any dating , for the sample entire , but is clearly consistent with a repair.

It is Most important for highlighting the quote I use from it:
“that some of the original Shroud date measurements reported by the three laboratories to the British Museum were modified from their original ‘raw’ laboratory values and transformed into their published form using an unstated methodology.”

A polite way to say the dating paper was fiddled! It was the one I chose to show opdrey the dating was fiddled , when he didn’t seem to believe it. The difference between us is opdrey prefers to consider it accidental, when the man in charge allows false data to be published that happens to say the tests were valid
( homogeneous) when they were invalid ( not homogeneous, so irrelevant).

It was deemed so important in the planning to get it right that history records the intention to bring in an Italian metrology laboratory to validate calculation. Like much of the protocol it was quietly forgotten. You only have to read the correspondence to see the dating was done in bad faith.

Without an explanation for the claimed data modifications, it seems presumptuous to assume dishonesty. I'm prepared to read the correspondence you mention, if you have a link or reference to it.

As before, without seeing the original documents, there's no reason to change my view. The documents I have seen don't support the claims you've made for them, and some of the people involved have not been the independent, upstanding, and unbiased individuals you implied.

 

[Astrid]

I agree. Hypotheses and theories are explanations for observed patterns.


Science codifies observed behaviour in terms of proximate causes that have deeper explanations (causes) that form part of a hierarchical web or framework of causal explanatory knowledge. As I have said numerous times on these forums, the fundamental level of causality in that framework is always brute fact - that's what makes it fundamental.

Currently, the fundamental causal explanation is quantum fields. If the framework of knowledge they support is potentially capable of explaining the phenomena we observe, we have no need to invoke magical, superstitious, or supernatural influences, which have no practical utility beyond emotional appeal.

If phenomena appear to be inexplicable within the framework, the first step is to verify the observation. Human observation - perception, memory, recall, etc. - is notoriously and demonstrably unreliable beyond providing pointers to phenomena for investigation, and experience tells us that deception is also a distinct possibility, so scientific methodologies have been developed to minimize such impacts on investigations.

Unfortunately, many seemingly inexplicable reports & claims cannot be satisfactorily investigated due to a lack of scientific record or control at some point. Sometimes the only observable pattern is an association with particular belief systems or worldviews that are untestable, unsupported by evidence, and orthogonal or contrary to the framework of established knowledge. Given that many of these belief systems make different, sometimes conflicting, claims of such inexplicable phenomena, it seems reasonable to assign a high probability to these claims being a product of those belief systems rather than accurate reports of objectively real phenomena. YMMV.

Examples of inexplicable event verified to have occurred?