Author's personal copy Dendrochronologia 28 (2010) 149–159 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Adverse implications of misdating in dendrochronology: Addressing the re-dating of the ‘‘Messiah’’ violin Henri D. Grissino-Mayer a,Ã , Paul R. Sheppard b , Malcolm K. Cleaveland c , Paolo Cherubini d , Peter Ratcliff e , John Topham f a Laboratory of Tree-Ring Science, Department of Geography, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA b Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA c Tree-Ring Laboratory, Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, Fayetteville, AR 72701 USA d Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland e Peter Ratcliff Violins, 50 Brunswick Street, West Hove, East Sussex BN3 1EL, England, UK f 114 Mid Street South Nutfield, Redhill Surrey, England, UK Received 29 April 2009; accepted 17 September 2009 Abstract A recent report by Mondino and Avalle (2009) was widely distributed that demonstrated a re-dating of the famous ‘‘Messiah’’ violin, a violin attributed to Antonio Stradivari with a label date of 1716. An outermost ring date of 1844 is instead suggested rather than dates in the 1680s reported in previous studies. Mondino and Avalle suggest that this outermost ring date supports the attribution of the violin to Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, a prolific French instrument maker who was well known for his copies of famous instruments. The statistical techniques and exercises used by Mondino and Avalle, however, are problematic and do not support this revised outermost date for the ‘‘Messiah’’ violin. Raw measurement data with original trends are used in their statistical crossdating, properties previously shown to hinder precise crossdating. They then substantiate their re-dating with polynomial trend curves, which has ever been accepted practice in dendrochronology. Furthermore, the authors use re-scaled correlation coefficients and t-values which artificially inflate the strength of the relationship between tree-ring series that are being statistically crossdated. Using the exact same tree-ring data, but using accepted techniques in statistical crossdating (e.g., the removal of all low-frequency trends and autocorrelation), we could not verify the revised dating of the ‘‘Messiah’’ violin. We urge caution for those who intend to use the SynchroSearch software, book, and lesson plans developed and distributed by Mondino and Avalle. This study illustrates the adverse effects possible in dendrochronology when investigators do not adhere to accepted and time-tested techniques, and are not versed in the extensive literature that highlights issues commonly encountered in statistical crossdating. & 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Keywords: Tree rings; Dendrochronology; Musical instruments; ‘‘Messiah’’ violin; Antonio Stradivari Introduction In early 2009, many dendrochronologists received by email a communication that announced a soon-to- be-published book titled ‘‘Course of Applied Dendro- chronology to Musical Instruments Dating for the ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.de/dendro 1125-7865/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dendro.2009.09.003 Ã Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 865 974 6029; fax: þ1 865 974 6025. E-mail address: grissino@utk.edu (H.D. Grissino-Mayer).