Maybrick Diary - Fake or Genuine

[caz]

But they were able to find trace evidence of Chloroacetamide. So the test was good enough.

But they then concluded the traces came from the control. The machine was apparently cleaned and voila! No traces of Chloroacetamide.

Game over. Set and match. A long time ago.

Call me thick, Lombro2 [why not? Most posters around these parts think so], but Leeds University tested samples of the ink scraped directly from various parts of the diary, so if this was Diamine, where did the expected amount of chloroacetamide disappear to when the test, which was repeated specifically to eliminate the possibility of a false positive first time round, indicated that none was present? How does that happen on an earth that isn't flat?

Palmer calls the Leeds tests 'muddled', but I prefer the term 'belt and braces'. If only one test was conducted by AFI, on ink dots sent over from the US if memory serves, how was it possible for anyone to be 100% positive that it could not have produced a false positive?

One can just imagine the howls of protest if Robert Smith had got a more favourable result from Baxendale and stopped there. Robert wasn't happy that Baxendale considered it 'likely' that the ink had originated since 1945, based on the supposed presence of a synthetic dye, which turned out to have been in general use in writing inks by the 1870s, and who could really have blamed him under those circumstances?

If AFI and Leeds had both returned repeated negative results for chloroacetamide, we can be 100% positive that Voller's warning about the difficulty of detecting it would have come into play to keep the Barrett hoax dream alive.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lombro2]

Wow, Caz. The Barrett Hoax Theorists’ earth is flatter than I thought.

[rjpalmer]

Wow, Caz. The Barrett Hoax Theorists’ earth is flatter than I thought.

No, she's just blowing smoke up your backside. Why she dangles imaginary carrots for the True Believers is anyone's guess.

The idea that the samples tested by Dr. Simpson were accidentally contaminated with the exact chemical that she was looking for while in transit from America is as laughable as it is desperate. There is utterly no reason to grab hold of this fantasy.

Dr. Robert Kuranz, the chemist who had carefully gathered these ink samples from the diary when part of Kenneth Rendell's team, had preserved them from the possibility of contamination by placing them in pristine laboratory grade gelatin capsules. Caroline seems to be harkening back the crazy theories of Paul Feldman who fantasized that Melvin Harris had somehow gotten hold of these samples and contaminated them at the nano level. Harris was in the UK; Kuranz sent them directly to AFI himself. It's a silly suggestion, if that is indeed what she is suggesting.

Notice the word "If" in her final, meaningless line. IF Dr. Simpson didn't find chloroacetamide, those dirty skeptics would have said X, Y, and Z, etc. etc. How is this a fact? This is mere mischief making by Caroline and is hardly one of the "facts" that she claims she is going to adhere to moving forward. I guess old habits die hard.

In truth, her statement is meaningless. Dr. Simpson DID find chloroacetamide but she did not set out to determine the percentage of that chemical in the paper/ink samples, which were diluted. Caroline has long been under the misapprehension that this disproves the ink is Diamine, but it does not. Far from it.

As for Leeds, if I recall Mr. Voller himself admitted there were deep concerns about their findings (or non-findings) due to their haphazard protocol, while in contrast Voller praised the work of Dr. Simpson. Why would any objective, non-partisan person favor the findings of someone who admitted they had allowed contamination over one whose protocol was proven to be expertly conducted? This is the sort of willful self-deception that is so typical of those who champion the Maybrick Hoax.

Of course, the matter could be revisited by Robert Smith if he wanted. There are now non-destructive means of analyzing the diary's ink as I mentioned on another thread. If the scientists in Russia can detect that George Orwell was on morphine when he wrote a letter from Spain in the 1930s, they can tell us the exact composition of the ink. But let's face it. The world has moved on, and no one is willing to fund further tests on this proven fake. If Smith ever tries to sell his relic at auction, perhaps it will happen then.

RP