CBCA Sponsors Scientific Testing on the Effects of Pressing

[tth2]

Does anyone believe that if Cheetah's $50,000 experiment was carried out over the ten year period, and at the end it was found to weaken the paper, that everyone would then never press or more importantly buy a pressed book, or inversely, if pressing is found to have zero effect on a book, that everyone who was against pressing will start believing in the process?

 

For a novice like myself it seems that the results would be good fodder for one side or the other in the form of an "I told you so", but would ultimately have little to no usefulness. The people who don't like pressing will continue not to buy pressed books, and the pro pressing buyers clearly don't have an issue either way and will not care that a book will disintegrate faster than an unpressed book, as they will have sold the book or will be long dead before they see it crumble in their hands.

 

Unless of course a smoking gun is revealed that these pressed books will self destruct in 10 years. Then Im pretty sure that lots of people will be pretty pissed off.

You are right. But the issue isn't so much the pressers, who are just in it for the money, but the people who are the potential market for pressed books. You might get a different response from potential buyers if they're told "pressing doesn't do anything to the book except make them look nicer" versus "empirical evidence has shown that pressing will irreversibly accelerate a book's aging/destruction".

[Ted Knight]

Isn't the most relevant paper the cover stock? Most of the grade of a comic is in the cover, and I'm sure much of the pressers' attention is focused on the covers, so it seems to me that the focus of this project should be on the impact of pressing on cover stock.

 

This is a good point. However, when the book is pressed, the whole book, body included, is subjected to heat, humidity, pressure, etc. I think the assumption is that the pulp is the weaker of the two paper stocks and would show deterioration faster. But I'm not sure that's correct.

[porcupine48]

I still can`t tell the difference between a copper/modern 9.4 and copper/modern 9.8.

To me they all look about the same these digital 9s,as the only difference I see is the huge price difference on the price sticker.

hearhear

[Theagenes]

I looked at some of the testing machines used for this type of work and I'm reasonably confident that they use a sample of the comic that you submit and not an entire page. Strips look they run about 4 inches in length. That would likely reduce the number of copies you would need since a single page could be used for multiple tests.

 

They can also run multiple samples simultaneously on some types of machines.

 

 

That's correct. That's what was done in this case. I believe I mentioned earlier that the tests were repeated on each sample until the material ran out. This usually ranged from 5 to 10 tests per sample. While not a huge amount it allowed for multiple results to be averaged and a standard deviation to be calculated. That way we have some ability to identify statistically significant differences, if any, between the pressed and unpressed halves.

 

We're not entirely clueless -- just limited in manpower and resources.

[drbanner]

I'm interested in seeing the results of the short-term effects...as in, is the paper immediately after pressing worse off (weaker) than before pressing. I think this experiment will provide some examples of that, although with so many types of paper stock used in comic books over the years, it would be hard to extrapolate the findings on modern comic book paper (for example) to golden age comic book paper (for example).

 

Great idea though, and I'm very interested in the results! (thumbs u

[Yellow Kid]

It has been depressing for me to read this thread and see how people are letting their emotional position on pressing blind them to the value of starting to collect objective data. The CBCA took the initiative to do a limitted pilot study on a topic of great interest to the hobby, and stated it had limitations and was just a pilot study, but instead of being reinforced for their efforts, they have been chided for not starting with the ultimate experiment. I have news for you. No sane scientist ever starts with the ultimate experiment. They do just what the CBCA is doing. They perform limited pilot studies to see if there might be anything worth pursuing. If there is, then they go another step. And even if they like their findings, they try and replicate them. I taught experimental design and analysis, and probablility and statistics, to doctoral students for most of my academic career, and I routinely published peer reviewed studies in leading journals. I was even accepted as an expert witness in statistics in Federal Court on several occassions. I mention this just to support my claim that they are starting off just fine. If the results are interesting, and if they want to pursue testing, I would be happy to assist. Power planning would let you determine the size of the sample, and a design could be established that had a minimum of confounding variables. But the first step is alays to do a very limited pilot study and try to determine if there is anything worth pursuing.

[fantastic_four]

One possible alternative to waiting 10 years is to artificially age the paper in those samples by baking it under controlled parameters. This is a technique that has a good deal of research behind it.

 

Are you saying that baking the paper is the same as aging it?

 

 

No, that it approximates it. Nobody will conduct this test over a 10-20 year time period.

 

Baking is what the Library of Congress researchers have used to simulate aging as well.

[fantastic_four]

My biggest concern about pressing is the risk, which I perceive as small but not negligible, that we will see a huge amount of pressed high grade books with brittle and disintegrating spines in 20-50 years.

 

Huh? Why? Are you assuming people are pressing books over and over and over and over and over? I doubt that happens more than 0.001% of the time; most sellers who press don't want to waste money on something that doesn't display pressable defects.

[fantastic_four]

My apologies in advance if this is a stupid question, but isn't the answer to this question already out there somewhere? Don't researchers, archivists and museums routinely press rare, valuable documents and ephemera most of which are far older and likely more fragile than your typical comic book in the interest of conserving and properly studying, storing or displaying the item? If the answer is yes, wouldn't the effects have been studied before being used on museum quality ephemera? I'm just very surprised that the the effects of pressing on old paper are not already known

 

I'm not aware that institutions routinely press documents as part of the conservation and archival storage process. Are you sure this is the case?

 

I asked the Library of Congress this question and I posted their answer in the grading forum--they only sparingly press when it's necessary because something is bent to the point that it can't be displayed well, and the reason they exercise caution in pressing is due to the slight damage that pressing causes.

[Theagenes]

It has been depressing for me to read this thread and see how people are letting their emotional position on pressing blind them to the value of starting to collect objective data. The CBCA took the initiative to do a limitted pilot study on a topic of great interest to the hobby, and stated it had limitations and was just a pilot study, but instead of being reinforced for their efforts, they have been chided for not starting with the ultimate experiment. I have news for you. No sane scientist ever starts with the ultimate experiment. They do just what the CBCA is doing. They perform limited pilot studies to see if there might be anything worth pursuing. If there is, then they go another step. And even if they like their findings, they try and replicate them. I taught experimental design and analysis, and probablility and statistics, to doctoral students for most of my academic career, and I routinely published peer reviewed studies in leading journals. I was even accepted as an expert witness in statistics in Federal Court on several occassions. I mention this just to support my claim that they are starting off just fine. If the results are interesting, and if they want to pursue testing, I would be happy to assist. Power planning would let you determine the size of the sample, and a design could be established that had a minimum of confounding variables. But the first step is alays to do a very limited pilot study and try to determine if there is anything worth pursuing.

 

Thank you Rich!

[fantastic_four]

If a newly discovered original but folded or crumpled copy of say the Gettysburg Address was brought to the National Archives, would they press it?

 

Almost certainly yes.

[fantastic_four]

The results won't matter. Anti-pressers are already poo-pooing it. Pro-pressers are already showing their reservations. Either way the data comes out, the sides have already been chosen.

 

Some of us are objective. I agree though, most aren't.

[fantastic_four]

Don't know for sure... I'm asking the question really to those that have looked into this a bit. But I would think that a lot of old documents are found in a condition that would lend itself to pressing... say they were folded, or rippled from humidity or water damage, or just crumpled up in an old box. If a newly discovered original but folded or crumpled copy of say the Gettysburg Address was brought to the National Archives, would they press it?

The tests in question is about comic books, not old documents. I don't see how any of this is relevent. The paper, printing process is different.

 

There are thousands of varieties in paper grade conservators deal with, and the rules for what processes they use does change with different types of paper, but comics aren't so different from other commonly-used types of paper that his general question isn't relevant. Comics aren't similar to the parchment the Gettysburg Address was likely printed on, but they're extremely similar to something conservators constantly deal with that is even more fragile than comics--newspapers.

[fantastic_four]

No one to my knowledge has ever done a test like this on pulp paper, and I have looked.

 

Did you ask Tracy or Susan? They're the ones who do it professionally and have a degree in it; even if they don't know they'd know better where to look for such a test than any of us.

[Bio-Rupp]

Oh how I miss the day when the majority of conservation for comics revolved around mainly just picking them out of the floor and putting them on a shelf.

[arexcrooke]

Does anyone believe that if Cheetah's $50,000 experiment was carried out over the ten year period, and at the end it was found to weaken the paper, that everyone would then never press or more importantly buy a pressed book, or inversely, if pressing is found to have zero effect on a book, that everyone who was against pressing will start believing in the process?

 

For a novice like myself it seems that the results would be good fodder for one side or the other in the form of an "I told you so", but would ultimately have little to no usefulness. The people who don't like pressing will continue not to buy pressed books, and the pro pressing buyers clearly don't have an issue either way and will not care that a book will disintegrate faster than an unpressed book, as they will have sold the book or will be long dead before they see it crumble in their hands.

 

Unless of course a smoking gun is revealed that these pressed books will self destruct in 10 years. Then Im pretty sure that lots of people will be pretty pissed off.

I think there are a lot of very valid points in this.

[fantastic_four]

Does anyone believe that if Cheetah's $50,000 experiment was carried out over the ten year period, and at the end it was found to weaken the paper, that everyone would then never press or more importantly buy a pressed book, or inversely, if pressing is found to have zero effect on a book, that everyone who was against pressing will start believing in the process?

 

For a novice like myself it seems that the results would be good fodder for one side or the other in the form of an "I told you so", but would ultimately have little to no usefulness. The people who don't like pressing will continue not to buy pressed books, and the pro pressing buyers clearly don't have an issue either way and will not care that a book will disintegrate faster than an unpressed book, as they will have sold the book or will be long dead before they see it crumble in their hands.

 

Unless of course a smoking gun is revealed that these pressed books will self destruct in 10 years. Then Im pretty sure that lots of people will be pretty pissed off.

I think there are a lot of very valid points in this.

 

Scientific research is for objective, open-minded people who are always willing to freely accept the possibility that a new hypothesis can challenge an old theory...can't really stop biased people from believing whatever it is they're fond of believing.

[EastEnd]

Does anyone believe that if Cheetah's $50,000 experiment was carried out over the ten year period, and at the end it was found to weaken the paper, that everyone would then never press or more importantly buy a pressed book, or inversely, if pressing is found to have zero effect on a book, that everyone who was against pressing will start believing in the process?

 

For a novice like myself it seems that the results would be good fodder for one side or the other in the form of an "I told you so", but would ultimately have little to no usefulness. The people who don't like pressing will continue not to buy pressed books, and the pro pressing buyers clearly don't have an issue either way and will not care that a book will disintegrate faster than an unpressed book, as they will have sold the book or will be long dead before they see it crumble in their hands.

 

Unless of course a smoking gun is revealed that these pressed books will self destruct in 10 years. Then Im pretty sure that lots of people will be pretty pissed off.

I think there are a lot of very valid points in this.

 

This makes sense to me too. If the impact of pressing is found to decrease the lifespan of a comic from say 300 years to 275 years, I don't think the results will have much of an impact. The delta would have to be dramatic to truly stigmatize pressing across the collecting community and change behavior.

[jools&jim]

 

If any more proof is needed by straight society that what was once an amusing and agreeable pastime for emotionally stunted people like me has over the years been transformed by various factors and individuals into a colossal (and colossally silly) waste of time, this sort of thing (i.e., the scientific testing of comic book paper) just might be it.

 

How long will it be before we use an electron microscope to grade books at a molecular level? Or, given that future generations bedecked in their shiny silver suits may be admiring their collections on other planets or in outer space, maybe we should book time aboard the International Space Station now to study the effects of Zero-G on comic books? Speaking of the future, is there a future for the cryogenic preservation of comics? Suspended animation? And has anyone talked to the superstring guys? Maybe the vibrations which create reality itself could be tweaked in such a way as to render comic books impervious to all known forms of aging and degeneration. And if a Ginsu knife can cut a beer can in half, but still remain sharp enough to slice through paper like a razor blade...why can't a comic book??? So many powerful intellects...so many silly ideas.

 

I suppose I understand why some feel that there is a need for all this, and as MacMan pointed out, I guess it's only relevant to HG collectors anyway, so I should probably just STFU. But it also suggests to me that Superman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby didn't really make a damn bit of difference in the end...and that no matter how smart or clever we get, there's still one born every minute...

 

 

[arexcrooke]

Does anyone believe that if Cheetah's $50,000 experiment was carried out over the ten year period, and at the end it was found to weaken the paper, that everyone would then never press or more importantly buy a pressed book, or inversely, if pressing is found to have zero effect on a book, that everyone who was against pressing will start believing in the process?

 

For a novice like myself it seems that the results would be good fodder for one side or the other in the form of an "I told you so", but would ultimately have little to no usefulness. The people who don't like pressing will continue not to buy pressed books, and the pro pressing buyers clearly don't have an issue either way and will not care that a book will disintegrate faster than an unpressed book, as they will have sold the book or will be long dead before they see it crumble in their hands.

 

Unless of course a smoking gun is revealed that these pressed books will self destruct in 10 years. Then Im pretty sure that lots of people will be pretty pissed off.

I think there are a lot of very valid points in this.

 

Scientific research is for objective, open-minded people who are always willing to freely accept the possibility that a new hypothesis can challenge an old theory...can't really stop biased people from believing whatever it is they're fond of believing.

Unless there is a great jaw dropping finding made I dont think it will change the outlook for either side. Both sides are able to rationalize their beliefs data be damned.