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

The Annals of Applie d Statistics 2008, V ol. 2, No. 1, 74–76 DOI: 10.1214 /08-A OAS99H Main articl e DO I: 10.1214/ 08-AOAS99 c  Institute of Mathematical Statistics , 2 008 DISCUSS ION OF: ST A TISTICA L ANAL YS IS OF AN AR C HEOLOGICAL FIND—SKEPTICAL COUNTING CHALL ENGES TO AN AR C HAEOLOGICAL FIND By Sheila M. Bird MRC Biostatistics Unit The New T esta men t (NT) tom b in East T a lpiy ot, Jerusalem wa s disco v- ered around Easter in 1980. Its sur v eyors at the time included Amos Kloner, whose 1980 PhD thesis was entitle d “T om bs and Burials in the Second T em- ple P erio d,” a to pic on wh ic h he co ntin ued to pub lish for at le ast the next 15–20 y ears. Why d id su ch a sc holar not seize a vidly the apparent historical opp ortun it y that fell to his lot? The tom b’s exca v ator, Y osef Ga th of the Departmen t of Antiquities an d Museums, died (d ate n ot s p ecified) of heart failure not long after complet- ing his w ork at the site. Up on completion of salv age exca v ations, “such b one material as remained w as reburied” in accordance with Jewish ritual law. Ho w muc h b one material remained? I assume that the ortho dox rabb inate prop erly r ecords r eburials? Coinciden tally , the NT tom b wa s disco vered jus t as Sir Alec Jeffreys (1978–8 4, in Leicester, UK) wa s disco vering DNA finger- printi ng [see http://g enome.we llcome.a c.uk/doc_wtd020877.html and Jeffreys, Wilson and Th ein ( 1985 )]. Some DNA analysis has b een essa y ed, whic h F euerv erger side-steps. Sh imon Gibson’s arc haeologi cal dra win gs at the time of exca v ation indicat ed 10 ossu aries. Ossuaries from th e NT tom b were tak en in to th e State of I s rael Collec- tions, but not until 1996 wa s it realized that records of the Israel Antiquitie s Authorit y (IAA) sh o w only n ine as ha ving b een receiv ed by it. Coun ting them all out a nd count ing them al l in, as famously rep orted b y a UK jour - nalist in the F alklands W ar, wa s inexplicably lax. According to a 1994-published int erpretation by authority Rahmani, and endorsed in 1996 b y Kloner, six were foun d to ha ve s uc h Hebrew inscriptions as “Mary a,” “Y oseh,” “Y esh u a son of Y ehosef,” “Y eh u da son of Y eshua,” “Mat y a”. . . or Greek inscription of “Ma r mamene [d imin u tiv e] wh o is also called Mara.” Att ributions of au th orit y are notoriously fickle: Rahm an i had Received January 2008. This is an electronic reprint of the or iginal a rticle published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in The Annals of Applie d Statistics , 2008, V ol. 2, No. 1, 74–7 6 . This repr int differs fr om the origina l in pagina tion and t ypo graphic detail. 1 2 S. M. BIRD also inte rpreted Mary and J oseph as the p arents of Y eshua and grand p aren ts of Y ehuda. F euerve r ger argues that, if Rahmani is co rrect in this interpre- tation, then the tombsite cannot b e that of the NT family . T h e h eretical al- ternativ e (which ancient religio u s authorities ma y ha ve disa v ow ed, or b een una w are of ) of Y esh u a’s ha ving had a son b y Mara is n ot admitted as a scien tific (prior) consideration. Rahmani’s in terpr etation of the ossuaries’ inscriptions is clearly a v alid reason for the NT tom b ’s h a ving not roused in the 1980s su c h titanic excite- men t as h as since b een engendered ( http://w ww.thehe rald.co.uk/feat ures/ features /display .var.122 6604.0.0.php ). As a practical statistician, m y fir st set of sceptical questions th er efore relates to the exa ct chronology of the tomb’s disco ve ry and exca v ation, the reburial of b one material (and its subsequent retriev al for DNA analysis), the registration(s) of ossuaries and d eciphering of in scriptions, and the time- trail of interpretatio ns of those inscriptions ve rsus the publication of said in terp retations. Let m e illustrate chronolog y by a con trov ersy in the UK press in early Jan- uary 2008 (see http://m edia.new scientis t.com/data/pdf/press/2637/263711.pdf and http ://www.g uardian. co.uk/science/2008/jan/03/medicalresearch.agriculture ) whic h surroun ds the pu blication in Decem b er 2007 of a case-study that was submitted to Archiv es in Neurology [ Mead et al. ( 2007 )], an American jour- nal, in F ebru ary 2006. It concerns a 39-y ear old w oman who died in 2000, 14 mon ths after clinical onset of disease that was ascrib ed to sp oradic CJD (despite at ypical fin dings at p ost-mortem). Of particular note were: (a) that she was v aline h omozygous at co d on 129 of the prion protein, a nd (b) that molecular analysis of cereb ellar tissue demonstrated a no vel P r P Sc t yp e s im - ilar to that seen in vCJD. The authors rep orted that transmiss ion studies w ere underwa y . Th is lady , w ere s he the first clinical case of vC JD in a patien t who is not methionine h omozygous at cod on 129 of the p rion protein, w ould b e as imp ortan t as a fi rst as w as h uman -to-human, blo o d-b orne transmission of vCJD, whic h merited parliamen tary announcemen t in UK. Mysterious, therefore, we r e the up-to-sev en-year delay in p ublication, failure to cite wh en transmission stud ies in mice h ad b egun, and the a uthors’ app arent caution that this w as, in fact, not vCJD. Only a limited p ost-mortem had b een p ermitted so that lymphoid tissue, such as from spleen and app endix, were not a v ailable for testing. The patien t had a tonsillectom y bu t at a date and hospital unsp ecified; and some of the molecular tec h niques used w ere rela- tiv ely recent. T ransmission studies had b een un derwa y for some time so that preliminary results from them ma y ind eed ha ve underpinned th e auth ors’ caution. I recoun t this cautionary tale for tw o reasons: first, to illustrate that statisticia ns ma y need a hinterland of sub j ect-matte r knowledge to identify the critical questions to ask b efore pro ceeding to in ference . . . and , secondly , b ecause it would be epidemiolog ically sho cking if, for sev en ye ars, UK had DISCUSSI ON 3 o ve rlo ok ed vCJD in a cli nical case wh o was v aline–v aline and , accordingly , the time-trail migh t p oin t to pathologica l or m olecular lacunae that n eeded to b e plugged in UK’s, Eu rop ean and w orld -wide CJD sur v eillance. Let me end with the other con un d rum: the missing or stolen ossuary from the NT to m b —an arc haeologic al, if n ot criminal, tra v esty . W as an ossuary inscrib ed “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus” and in the p ossession of a priv ate Israeli an tiqu ities colle ctor u nder prosecution for alleged forgery of p art of said inscription from the NT tomb? F euerv erger notes th at, due to the Sabbath, the NT tomb was left op en from F rida y afterno on to Sunda y morning in the four-day p eriod of 28–31 Marc h 1980. He sp eculate s that in- v estigating arc haeologi sts were unlike ly to ha ve missed a s ev enth inscription (ev en pr ior to their h a ving b een “cleaned u p”) on the 10 ossu aries they’d lo cated. Thus, if the “James” ossuary indeed came from the NT tom b , it w ould hav e to h a ve b een an 11th that the in v estigating archaeo logists had someho w o v erlo ok ed. Th at conv eniently lea ves the “missing” 10th ossu ary as unins cr ib ed. T his line of argument is flimsy , b ut so to o is it extraordin ary to me that s uc h antiquities w ere: (a) left op en, (b) inaccurately curated, and (c) long un d er-rated as p otent ially newsworth y . . . unless sc h olars had indeed p osed critical questions, and deplo y ed DNA or other scie n tific tec hniques, that ha ve unv eiled more con text th an th e problem p osited, somewh at m ys - teriously , to in v estigator F euerv er ger to cast statistical light on. K no w thin e enem y (bias). REFERENCES Jeffreys, A. J., Wilson, V. and Thein , S . L. (1985). Individual-sp ecific “fi n gerprints” of human DNA. Natur e 316 76–79. Mead, S., Joiner, S., De sbr u slais, M., Beck, J. A., O’Donoghue, M. , Lantos, P., W adswo r th, J. D. F. and Collinge, J. (2007). Creutzfeldt–Jakob d isease, prion protein gene codon 129VV, and a nov el PrP Sc type in a young British woman. Ar chives of Neur ol o gy 64 1780–1 784. MRC Biost a tistics Unit Institute of Public Heal th University F or vie Site R obinson W a y Cambridge CB2 2SR United Kingdom E-mail: sheila.bird@mrc- bsu.cam.ac.uk