The Shroud of Turin.
Over a decade ago in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer ( July/ August 2004 and May/June 2005), a controversy erupted concerning some claims by Turin Shroud proponent Ray Rogers. He had purported to show that radiocarbon tests of the linen—dating it to between 1260 and 1390 and thus revealing it to be a fake—were invalid because, he hypothesized, the samples came from a “medieval patch.” In some detail, I suggested his claims were “cut from whole cloth.”
There were several issues, but Rogers’s key evidence was his analysis of two pyrolysis spectra that showed a difference between the area selected for C14 testing and the rest of the cloth. Some shroud proponents had previously postulated that the C14 sample must have come from a patch. Since this apparently could not be seen by those who cut the samples, it must have been done by “invisible reweaving.” I challenged these claims on the basis of much other, better evidence. (Sadly, Rogers died while our last exchange was still in press.)