Alisa Gladyseva: Voynich manuscript is decoded

[geoffreycaveney]

She is talking about Petra in Constantinople and not Petra in Jordan, right? The Jordan Petra was in ruins by the Middle Ages.

If she's talking about the Petra that was part of Constantinople, I would be interested in her list of references 

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Yes, l was wondering that on your behalf as well - as bothersome as constant seeking of attribution can be, l also understand how research like this is necessarily built on others work and the system really breaks down when contributions are not acknowledged.

In my experience I have found that academic researchers in Russia / former USSR / Eastern Europe can be much more casual about citing or not citing their sources than any serious or established Western academic researcher would ever dare to be. Apparently a credible accusation of plagiarism is not necessarily the academic career-killer there that it is in the West. As one such example, I recall a famous elite-level Russian chess instructor once published a large book of chess positions as instructional exercises, and in the preface he casually noted in a sweeping statement that he had collected the positions over the course of many decades from a large variety of sources, and he could not possibly cite the exact sources of any of the positions now. No one seemed to bat an eye at such a statement, and I do not recall any adverse career consequences coming to him as a result of this frank admission of his failure / inability to cite his sources. Of course chess instruction is a slightly different field than institutional academics per se, but I have observed similar attitudes from academic researchers as well.