[Article] [split] A Proposed Mapping of the Voynich Alphabet to an Indo-European Language

[Anton]

We would also like to thank
Mr. Robert Downing for his guidance throughout the project, as
well as the Olive Children Foundation and the ASDRP faculty and
staff for giving us this opportunity to conduct research.


He did not write, he "guided".

He is the corresponding author, so it cannot be said that he did not write. But who is Mr Downing and why he is kinda opposed to the rest of the authors team in this discussion?

[-JKP-]

Downing has co-authored more than one paper but I haven't really looked into them so I don't know what his views are on the Voynich Manuscript (when there are several co-authors, it's difficult to know who contributed what).

However, if it's a student paper, obviously it needs to be evaluated (by the community) differently from a research paper. The goal is to guide, support and teach.

I agree with Don. If it's a student paper, that should have been made clear at the beginning, not buried in the small print.


I tried looking up the names to see if there were other adults involved, but some of them are common names, so it's difficult to know.

Well, my comments stand, but I'll summarize them for the record:

• Presentation and layout are good.
  
• The logic needs to be improved. You can't change one word into another just because they look similar.
  
• The methodology needs to be more complete and clear.
  
• The actual transliteration scheme was not revealed and it should be included.
  
• Cherry-picking words on the assumption that they will generalize to the rest of the manuscript is perilous—one cannot assume it will work, it has to be explicitly demonstrated.
  
• Plus... I very strongly feel the mentor should have steered the students toward reputable research, rather than a foundation as shaky as Cheshire.
  

[MichelleL11]

[quote='-JKP-' pid='40340' dateline='1599404590']

Ruby, I just had an awful thought...



Maybe Downing was a mentor for the paper and the other names are teenagers.

I can confirm that Fremont STEM is very likely a high school (likely grades 9-12, so ages 14-18).  I used to live near there.  Downing is likely a computer scientist, given the topic of the paper and it is too bad that time isn't taken to understand things critically.

I had thought to post about this work to understand the Vulgar Latin conclusion in this work, also guided by Downing

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but I decided to start with Jaskiewicz see (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) because of the possibility of it applying to the hyper-vector work.

[ReneZ]

It would have been possible to discuss this paper in a different kind of way.

[Koen G]

Should I delete this thread so we can start over?

[ReneZ]

Don't ask me

[bi3mw]

In my opinion, the thread became partly unobjective only after the personal attacks of asdrpradii. But now it is "on the track" again.

[Koen G]

I think it's a bit of an avalanche chain reaction:

* paper does not specify initially that it was written by minors
* paper is judged as if it was written by an adult scholar
* person involved reacts to this 

I've only now had time to check it out myself, and given the way Robert Downing presented the paper on Academia, I cannot blame the initial reactions in this thread. The fact that any adult with an Academia.edu account endorsed Cheshire's serial offending of various branches of science is a shame.

[DONJCH]

Should I delete this thread so we can start over?

Why? We are the ones who were played.
The responses were reasonable in the circumstances.

Welcome to the wonderful world of research, kids.
If you don't cover yourselves properly, you are liable to be mauled.

So be careful with your choice of supervisor and start with a thorough literature review.

[-JKP-]

I would certainly have used a different tone and approached it with different priorities if I had known it was students (we still don't know how many might have been students, since Downing's name is in line with the others, perhaps there are more adults).

But the things that need fixing/attention do not change.

There is room for improvement. I hope that is the message that gets across.


It seems rather harsh for a mentor to throw a student paper into the academia.edu cauldron without a disclaimer at the top.