Discussion of: Statistical analysis of an archeological find--skeptical counting challenges to an archaeological find

arXiv:0804.0093v1 [stat.AP] 1 Apr 2008 The Annals of Applied Statistics 2008, Vol. 2, No. 1, 74–76 DOI: 10.1214/08-AOAS99H Main article DOI: 10.1214/08-AOAS99 c ⃝Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2008 DISCUSSION OF: STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF AN ARCHEOLOGICAL FIND—SKEPTICAL COUNTING CHALLENGES TO AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIND By Sheila M. Bird MRC Biostatistics Unit The New Testament (NT) tomb in East Talpiyot, Jerusalem was discov- ered around Easter in 1980. Its surveyors at the time included Amos Kloner, whose 1980 PhD thesis was entitled “Tombs and Burials in the Second Tem- ple Period,” a topic on which he continued to publish for at least the next 15–20 years. Why did such a scholar not seize avidly the apparent historical opportunity that fell to his lot? The tomb’s excavator, Yosef Gath of the Department of Antiquities and Museums, died (date not specified) of heart failure not long after complet- ing his work at the site. Upon completion of salvage excavations, “such bone material as remained was reburied” in accordance with Jewish ritual law. How much bone material remained? I assume that the orthodox rabbinate properly records reburials? Coincidentally, the NT tomb was discovered just as Sir Alec Jeffreys (1978–84, in Leicester, UK) was discovering DNA finger- printing [see http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd020877.html and Jeffreys, Wilson and Thein (1985)]. Some DNA analysis has been essayed, which Feuerverger side-steps. Shimon Gibson’s archaeological drawings at the time of excavation indicated 10 ossuaries. Ossuaries from the NT tomb were taken into the State of Israel Collec- tions, but not until 1996 was it realized that records of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) show only nine as having been received by it. Counting them all out and counting them all in, as famously reported by a UK jour- nalist in the Falklands War, was inexplicably lax. According to a 1994-published interpretation by authority Rahmani, and endorsed in 1996 by Kloner, six were found to have such Hebrew inscriptions as “Marya,” “Yoseh,” “Yeshua son of Yehosef,” “Yehuda son of Yeshua,” “Matya”. . . or Greek inscription of “Marmamene [diminutive] who is also called Mara.” Attributions of authority are notoriously fickle: Rahmani had Received January 2008. This is an electronic reprint of the original article published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2008, Vol. 2, No. 1, 74–76. This reprint differs from the original in pagination and typographic detail. 1 2 S. M. BIRD also interpreted Mary and Joseph as the parents of Yeshua and grandparents of Yehuda. Feuerverger argues that, if Rahmani is correct in this interpre- tation, then the tombsite cannot be that of the NT family. The heretical al- ternative (which ancient religious authorities may have disavowed, or been unaware of) of Yeshua’s having had a son by Mara is not admitted as a scientific (prior) consideration. Rahmani’s interpretation of the ossuaries’ inscriptions is clearly a valid reason for the NT tomb’s having not roused in the 1980s such titanic excite- ment as has since been engendered (http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/ features/display.var.1226604.0.0.php). As a practical statistician, my first set of sceptical questions therefore relates to the exact chronology of the tomb’s discovery and excavation, the reburial of bone material (and its subsequent retrieval for DNA analysis), the registration(s) of ossuaries and deciphering of inscriptions, and the time- trail of interpretations of those inscriptions versus the publication of said interpretations. Let me illustrate chronology by a controversy in the UK press in early Jan- uary 2008 (see http://media.newscientist.com/data/pdf/press/2637/263711.pdf and http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/03/medicalresearch.agriculture) which surrounds the publication in December 2007 of a case-study that was submitted to Archives in Neurology [Mead et al. (2007)], an American jour- nal, in February 2006. It concerns a 39-year old woman who died in 2000, 14 months after clinical onset of disease that was ascribed to sporadic CJD (despite atypical findings at post-mortem). Of particular note were: (a) that she was valine homozygous at codon 129 of the prion protein, and (b) that molecular analysis of cerebellar tissue demonstrated a novel PrPSc type sim- ilar to that seen in vCJD. The authors reported that transmission studies were underway. This lady, were she the first clinical case of vCJD in a patient who is not methionine homozygous at codon 129 of the prion protein, would be as important as a first as was human-to-human, blood-borne transmission of vCJD, which merited parliamentary announcement in UK. Mysterious, therefore, were the up-to-seven-year delay in publication, failure to cite when transmission studies in mice had begun, and the authors’ apparent caution that this was, in fact, not vCJD. Only a limited post-mortem had been permitted so that lymphoid tissue, suc

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