Writing papers about the Voynich MS

[Mark Knowles]

The Curse is what got me interested in the Voynich (not that I spent money on it, I found it in the Welsh hotel library on a wet Sunday afternoon. Sorry! Should I post you a cheque for the cover price? I feel guilty now that I'm addressing the author!)

Seriously, however:
If I wrote a paper about molecular biology, with no background and reputation in the field, I would never get coverage.
In the Voynich, if I am sufficiently estrambolico, I will become world famous.
Sadly, this is because our media today is forced to publish 24/7 and as such is starved of content. It's more a comment upon the reading public than the idiots who write nonsense about our beloved book.

I think the real truth, unpopular as it is to say to some,  but as I often repeat there is nobody who can be said to be clearly an expert on the manuscript. Yes, some people know quite a lot about the manuscript in terms of details such as its history with regards to Emperor Rudolf etc. I say this as there is no one individual who if all their unproven ideas turned out to be wrong would subsequently be regarded as an expert! Anyone who claims that they only present facts is in my opinion being disingenuous as I have seen everybody present their own hypotheses or theories.

There is so little of real substance that is known about the Voynich manuscript that, unlike molecular biology where a whole body of knowledge underpins it, identifying expertise is uncertain. Now it will be said that we know so much about the Voynich, but really isn't true; it is like saying that we know so much about aliens. Whilst people have written thoughtfully about the likelihood of there being aliens and what we can speculate biochemically about what they might be like, the reality is that we as a society have never knowingly encountered an alien. I have read enough of what other people have written about the manuscript to conclude that it is very easy to overstate the knowledge we have. Of course, we have many statistical results, but whether those are just scratching the surface is hard to say.

So I think the reason why anyone can propel themselves to Voynich celebrity, if only briefly, is that it is much harder to say that someone else, not them, is a real expert on the manuscript.

I want to agree that people researching the Voynich can only benefit from being more widely read on the subject of the Voynich and clearly some people introducing theories have read little to nothing of what is written on the subject and that has inhibited their ability to spot the flaws in their theories.