[Conference] Voynich conference!

[MarcoP]

The program has been posted, and registration is open! Join us!

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Wonderful! Even better than my high expectations!

[Torsten]

Most of the presentations were submitted by members of the Programme Committee, who reviewed the presentations. In my eyes the program is far too one sided. Therefore I will not attend.

[Mark Knowles]

Most of the presentations were submitted by members of the Programme Committee, who reviewed the presentations. In my eyes the program is far to one sided. Therefore I will not attend.

I did rather have that sense too, but maybe next time they will manage to get it a bit more balanced. For a first time it is not bad. I don't know if the plan is for this to occur annually thereafter.

[LisaFaginDavis]

As I wrote on Twitter, Torsten, each submission was double-blind reviewed by three qualified members of the Committee, and anyone who could work out who the author was recused themselves from reviewing the submission.

[Koen G]

The program has been posted, and registration is open! Join us!

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Amazing. This will certainly represent the most extensive body of Voynich research ever released at an event. Even if I wasn't presenting a paper, I wouldn't want to miss this.

I'm happy to see that there appears to be a wide range of subjects and approaches, both by academics who have published about the VM before and some who haven't.

[Mark Knowles]

As I wrote on Twitter, Torsten, each submission was double-blind reviewed by three qualified members of the Committee, and anyone who could work out who the author was recused themselves from reviewing the submission.

Even then isn't there a risk that those who review the submissions could have a particular perspective on the Voynich manuscript and therefore have a bias towards submissions that reflected their own perspectives. If the inclination of the committee members was that the approach that Torsten favours was wrong they could have had a bias against someone advocating that approach.(I have no dog in that fight as I have made no such submission to this committee, although I have recently presented to a conference on historical cryptography.)

[Koen G]

Having submitted a paper myself, I can attest to the professionalism of the reviewers. Initially I was skeptical (who can review papers about Voynich imagery without letting some bias shine through?), but most of their comments made sense. They made us rewrite a lot - Cary and I had to work hard to rewrite almost our entire paper - but the result is that it got better. So from my own experience, I can assure you that the review process was taken very seriously. Of course, reviewers are human beings with human flaws, but this applies to any peer review process in any field.

With a range of subjects like this, I also don't understand why one would find it too one-sided. Claire Bowern will provide arguments both in favor and against "nonsense text". And one of the speakers is Claus Schmeh, who (if I recall correctly) favors Torsten's views on the text. The implication that only speakers of one 'school of thought' would be permitted is absurd.

[Aga Tentakulus]

Saw it. It just flew into my mailbox.
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[Emma May Smith]

Thanks for posting the programme. Some of the papers seem very interesting.

(I hadn't registered to attend, but will do soon. I'll need to skive off a seminar and a colloquia, but nothing serious.)

[MarcoP]

Will participants have access to the papers before the conference? I am sure I would be able to better follow the presentations if I could read them first...