The Voynich Ninja

OK. There are many interpretations of the Earth's shape, and flat Earth is one of them, so no further action is needed.

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Quote:Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

UDHR Article 19.

Quote:We found that there are many interpretations of the Voynich manuscript and that this paper offers one of them...Romance Studies.

Cool, looks like ive found a publisher for my 'medieval aliens didit' theory   

I wasn't expecting much, but this was about the least satisfactory reply imaginable.

Well, one can't keep everybody satisfied, someone would always be not happy...

I just want to say that the Romance Studies peer review thing is bizarre. Nothing about this reflects a standard peer-review process or normal behaviour from a journal editorial team. I am not convinced that the people they asked to do the peer-review were suitably qualified as even if the reviewers knew nothing about the VMS, C did not demonstrate comprehension of the basics of medieval linguistics or palaeography, and he misused a lot of standard terminology in ways that should have been huge red flags to any reviewer.

Stuff gets rejected from journals all the time, so quite how and why this got published raises a lot of very unfortunate questions about what is going on at that journal.

(13-09-2019, 03:11 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:We found that there are many interpretations of the Voynich manuscript and that this paper offers one of them...Romance Studies.

Cool, looks like ive found a publisher for my 'medieval aliens didit' theory   

Just don't forget to throw some romance in...

This mail reminded me of something from a logic class I once had. There's a counter-intuitive rule that anything may follow from an impossible statement.
For example, "IF the moon is made of cheese, THEN David is Anton's brother". This statement is logically true.

The same reasoning seems to go for VM theories. There are a lot of competing theories, so everything goes.

Quote:Thank you for your query following up on this. Alongside the publisher, this paper and the concerns raised have been reviewed in line with the industry standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics. We found that there are many interpretations of the Voynich manuscript and that this paper offers one of them, so we have taken the decision that no further action is needed.


[font=Calibri, sans-serif]With very best wishes[/font]



[font=Calibri, sans-serif]Lloyd Davies[/font]

[font=Calibri, sans-serif]Editor[/font]

[font=Calibri, sans-serif]Romance Studies[/font]

He forgot to say, "We don't care if there are serious logical or historical flaws because another point of view over-rides all scholarly considerations and standards of quality."

I agree with RobGea, we can now submit our aliens-did-it theories.


Koen, at least you can take heart in the fact that it is currently on the firing line (small compensation, I know, but the bigger the pile of p__, the harder it will fall).

There were some suggestive words from the blog Faktoider (faktoider.blogspot.com) about this case (Swedish):

Quote:Det kan tilläggas att Gerard Cheshire nyligen doktorerat på Bristols universitet. Men inte inom något språkrelaterat, utan inom biologi. Hans avhandling handlar om "an adaptive theory for human belief systems" vilket väcker funderingar på om hans övningar med MS408 i själva verket är ett experiment.

To provide a basic summary of the above, in the blog the author notes that Cheshire recently defended a PhD (in Biology, a subject not related to language) with the title "an adaptive theory for human belief systems" which raises thoughts that his drills with the Voynich manuscript in actuality is an experiment.

Who knows?