'TIS THE SEASON: New experiments on Shroud [of Turin] show it’s not medieval (Vatican Insider).
It's dismaying to see how readily this has been taken up by the media and blogs. Here's a helpful rule of thumb: stories timed for Easter about how the Shroud of Turin turns out to be ancient after all are likely to have some problems with them. Steve Caruso has a blog post that sums up the problems with this one: "New experiments on [the Shroud of Turin] show it’s not medieval" -- What?? (the Aramaic Blog).
Briefly, if your multiple scientific test results give you a (95% certain!) 1500-year range, maybe rather than averaging them you should start thinking about whether your samples are contaminated or incorrectly provenanced. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Archbishop of Turin (who as the official custodian of the Shroud would have every reason to welcome the conclusion) doubts that the samples are actually from the Shroud and dismisses the results.
Background on the Shroud of Turin and the endless less-than-securely-founded theories about it is here and just keep following those links back.
