McCrone and STURP

After McCrone did his research on the sticky tapes, he attempted to publish his findings in peer-reviewed journals and to have STURP’s seal of approval on his paper. But, when STURP team members reviewed his work, they did not approve it because it was not scientifically rigorous.

STURP comments on McCrone’s paper:

The letter reads in part, “In short, your data is misrepresented, your observations are highly questionable, and your conclusions are pontifications rather than scientific logic; I cannot permit this paper
to carry the Shroud of Turin Research Project’s seal of approval.”174 The second paper received a “similar” response.175 Heller attributes McCrone’s resignation from STURP to McCrone “feeling insulted” at the reception of the two papers.176 One indication that McCrone had the capacity to be insulted to the point that he consequently resigned appears in this 1996 comment: I expected the world to agree with my conclusions [about the Shroud]. I’ve been spoiled. I’m used having everyone agree with me (sometimes even when I’ve been wrong). Now, to find out they don’t believe me when I’m right is difficult to take.177

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

McCrone responded with:

McCrone certainly had the capacity to insult,
for he wrote to Wilson, “Adler is an ass and you may
quote me,” 179 and stated in his book, “The variance
between their [the STURP scientists’] conclusions
and the truth concerning the Shroud image is due to
incompetence, deceit, or a combination of the two.”

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

McCrone “resigned” from STURP during this episode:

“I had also been
told by STURP that I’d never be able to publish my
papers because one of them would be asked to
review them by any Journal Editor.” 183 McCrone’s
resignation occurred in June 1980, 184 and it would be
useful to know when he was told his papers would not
clear any peer-review panel: was it before or after
his resignation? If before, then McCrone’s being told
they would never clear almost certainly contributed to
his desire to resign. If it was after he resigned, then
the ‘this won’t get published’ conveyance could have
been in the form ‘These papers need serious work.
You resigned from STURP and so cannot do
additional testing on the slides, testing that is
necessary to make your papers publishable. And
without those experiments, we are not going to permit
these papers to be published.’

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

Heller and Adler did additional chemical tests to confirm it’s not painting, but real blood on the shroud:

By its appearance under a microscope, the
‘blood’ appeared to be blood to Heller and Adler, who
should know based on their familiarity with blood and
a control blood preparation. Heller’s insistence that
testing would be relied upon and not merely
identification-by-sight resulted in H&A conducting
extensive, even exhaustive, testing of Shroud material.
Through their testing, Heller and Adler obtained
positive wet-chemistry test results for blood material,
results that included the detection of heme porphyrin,
hemochromagen, cyanmethemoglobin, and bile
pigments. In addition, the ‘blood’ tested positive for
protein, and proteolytic enzymes completely dissolved
‘blood’ material. H&A presented several
physics-based measurements indicating that blood
material resides on the Shroud, including X-ray
fluorescence data revealing higher-than-elsewhere
iron levels in ‘blood’ areas, and indicative
microspectrophotometry spectra.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

In his research, McCrone relied on the older technique of visual observation through a microscope.

Trained on, familiar with, and devoted to the
polarized light microscope, McCrone was reluctant to
do wet-chemistry testing and loathe to accept the
peer-reviewed results of the 1978 physics-based
testing. Such a phenomenon is a common occurrence
17in the world of science, where people often prefer to
continue using machines and techniques they are
familiar with rather than adopt and use newer and
better techniques and instruments.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

Because he observed the samples that was on sticky tape, it would be practically impossible to differentiate if a particle was birefringent or not because the tape would contribute to the refraction of light.

Further casting doubt on McCrone’s
microscope claims is the fact that he attributed
crystalline characteristics, including birefringence, to
red Shroud particles based on examination of the
particles on the Mylar sticky tape, which makes
anything appear birefringent.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf

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