What Can Go Wrong in Carbon 14 Dating?
Mistakes can and do happen. But modern carbon 14 dating laboratories are very careful to avoid mistakes. Equipment is carefully calibrated, test samples are used for comparisons and the samples to be carbon 14 dated are carefully cleaned in chemical baths to remove contamination. Groundwater or carbonated rocks such as limestone can contaminate a carbon 14 sample. Insect and worm holes as well as cracks and fissures may allow different parts of a sample to be contaminated differently and such possibilities must be carefully accounted for in carbon 14 dating. In recent years, some scientists have suggested that biological polymers might grow on some materials such as the fibers of ancient linen cloth or that fires near a sample might introduce significant newer carbon into an object. These ideas have been floated to try and explain why the carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin might be wrong. But most scientists discount these hypotheses, pointing out how much new carbon would be requ
