Steven Carr

Don't forget. Christianity would have been refuted if the authorities in the first century AD had produced evidence that it was false.

There is nothing Christians do more readily than accept evidence which falsifies their beliefs.

Steven Carr

Would you have bought a second-hand ossuary from Morton Smith, knowing he was a forger?

darstec

As in -- thus far nobody has refuted the book I'm going to write next week? :grin:

Toto

Wofgang Krumbein appears well qualified, but he is not an independent expert. He is being paid by the defense to attack the methodology of the prosecution's witnesses.

S.C.Carlson

My initial impression of the Krumbein report is that it is following a "scorched earth" policy on the scientific evidence. He is basically claiming that the ossuary has been exposed to a variety of different conditions, including repeated cleanings and being outside of a sealed cave environment, that undercut the IAA's assumptions used in assessing whether it was forged.

I don't find his positive evidence for authenticity, as set forth in the report, to be particularly persuasive because he does not give enough information about the "microscopically small samples" of the patina to understand what he did and whether he could have made any mistakes because "[t]he working conditions were bad" for his examination. Even so, though he presents lot of photographs, none of them specifically shows where exactly he obtained the microsamples of the so-called natural patina within the inscription (which had been repeatedly cleaned) and what exactly his "mineralogy and electron microscopy" examination entailed. There are no close up photographs of these samples showing what he claims is in them.

It caught my eye that Krumbein quoted the IAA's Goren report that the bone particles in the ossuary show "evidence of having been considerably heated." Krumbein takes from this that "the ossuary was subject ... to temperatures higher than temperatures typical of a sealed cave environment." Krumbein, however, does not explain how hot the ossuary got (i.e. whether it was baked by the forger to speed up the chemical reactions) and to what extent this elevated temperature affect his own findings on authenticity.

It is important to keep in mind that this report was prepared for the defense. By that, I am certainly not suggesting that Krumbein is liar or is otherwise dishonest. Far from it, but it is important to understand what the defense is trying the accomplish with respect to the burden of proof. For the defense, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to show that Oded Golan is the forger and Krumbein's report, if believed to be competent, would have the purpose of creating doubts about the prosecution's evidence. Krumbein does not have any burden of showing that the ossuary is authentic (though for PR purposes, Shanks would love it) and the report does not try very hard in doing so. In fact, the report leaves the door open to the possibility that, if it is a forgery, it was forged by someone other than his client (e.g. in the 1800s). For example, Krumbein states:
For purposes of the trial, all the defense report has to do is discount the analysis by the other side. Because scientists vary in the strictness of their assumptions, it is not very difficult to find an honest, but very strict, expert scientist to opine that someone else's methodology was not rigorous enough or used improper assumptions. Critiquing colleagues' reports for errors and problematic assumptions is what scientists do.

Outside of this trial, the burden of proof lies on the scholar asserting authenticity, and the Krumbein report makes meeting that burden for the ossuary very difficult. Most importantly it opens up the provenance to additional opportunities for forgery. Where ever Golan got the bone box from it, it is unlikely that it had just been sitting in a cave for 1900 years. The repeated cleanings of the ossuary and variations in the environment conditions that the ossuary was subjected to mean that there is insufficient evidence left to authenticate the artifact or its inscription.

More seriously, the accused dealer admitted that one of the ossuary's thorough cleanings took place during his possession of it and he has been unable to explain where the bone box came from. The dealer is the person most responsible for this lack of evidence. For that reason and the fact that he has knowlingly or unwittingly sold forgeries, he does not deserve the benefit of the doubt as to the authenticity of his million-dollar item.

Stephen Carlson

Haran

Huh? Sorry...didn't understand that.

Haran

Doesn't this imply that Krumbein is being dishonest or manipulative with the data he presents? Wouldn't doing this risk his reputation?

Haran

Stephen,

What do you make of Krumbein's harsh statements about the faulty analysis of Goren, et al.? What about the possibility that he suggests of tampering by the IAA and/or police?

S.C.Carlson

Which ones are you thinking of?

My impression is that he wants analyses to be as strict as possible. For example, he writes (emphasis original):

I don't know of any real-world science, esp. in support of archaeology, that has the luxury of "certainty." What needs to be done is to examine is not so much whether the ideal assumptions do in fact hold (because they won't), but how robust the analysis is to departures from the ideal. I don't see that in Krumbein's report.

I cannot find the word "tamper" in the report. I do find this:
It is not so much a complaint about tampering but a frustration that he could not do the kind of thorough analysis of the inscription he really wanted to do.

The defense apparently hired a super-strict guy. I definitely don't think he's dishonest, and, in fact, it is in the best interests of the defense to hire someone who is so honest that he is unfamiliar with the dishonest techniques that forgers do. If he has any experience dealing with fakes, I didn't see it in his resume.

Stephen

Vorkosigan

Krumbein's report is online:

http://www.bib-arch.org/bswbOOossuar...beinreport.pdf

I'll be long with my own comments in a few minutes.

Michael