PBS needs a skeptical thinking cap on the Shroud of Turin

Instead, Secrets of the Dead gives us an episode HUGELY biased in favor of “it’s Jesus” Shroud worshipers.

On the entire hour of showtime, I saw just one actual skeptic, and he got no more than 60 seconds of air time.

All the old bogus arguments got trotted out:
1. There’s bloodstains (no, that’s vermillion pigment).
2. The CO2 dating is off due to “contamination” (no, it would take twice the total CO2 weight of the shroud to throw its dating off by 1,300 years).
3. A sudarion (2,000-year-old style) head cloth from Spain “validates” the Shroud (no, it undercuts it, because how could it have blood and a face image as well as the Shroud itself).
4. Pollen only from the Jerusalem area is on the Shroud (it was lifted with Scotch tape, very likely to have been contaminated itself).

That’s just the top four, for starters. I could easily list half a dozen more. For example, if the Shroud itself were an actual burial cloth, draped over the body of Jesus or whomever from head down, why aren’t the forward and reverse images on the Shroud touching each other at the top of the head?

OOPS!

(Note: Since I posted this, I discovered this was a rerun of a show that originally aired in 2004. If anything, that makes PBS’ crime even more egregious.)