22-06-2016, 04:30 PM
JKP
I've been writing up in 'longhand' online, the result of my eighteen months analysis of the Voynich manuscript's imagery. It has taken an awfully long time, because in the past I thought I should try to write for amateurs, simplifying the language, substituting online sources for the ones I'd actually consulted, and trying to find copyright-free, online illustrations to substitute for those in my own library and picture collection. Very time-consuming.
It has been a constant and regular occurrence that when I announce a new theme or area of study, that suddenly it will occur to someone, usually a constant peruser of my work, to "get a better opinion" from someone who has never, until then, referred to the topic, the manuscript, the period of history, or the plant id.. etc.
What I then find, is that my original conclusion about the map, or about it's connection to the portolan charts (by the way, that was my own comment to P.Han's blog - I checked)... is suddenly re-invented by someone else after being asked to "investigate the idea" or "offer an opinion about...." my work.
Initially, I could count on a time-lapse of perhaps a couple of months, or (when Steve D came on the scene) a couple of day, but to see in a thread where I had announced, in advance, the topic I was about to treat that other peoples "opinion" was being sought - without so much as the courtesy to see first what I intended to say - did get my goat. I've had seven years and more of this happening. Why can't the original be read, and acknowledged, and responded to in the normal way?
It seems to have become, by some very peculiar form of non-logic, almost a "matter of principle" to first refuse to acknowledge that work emerging from my research is original, and then to find it so useful that someone else is asked to re-work the subject asap.
The pattern, I repeat, has been there for years. It is so bad that a specialist in the history of portolans (one I know because of our common area of interest) was actually asked to write a paper "considering an idea" that there was a connection to the Voynich map. That "idea" was nothing of the sort. it was the conclusion which I had drawn after a considerable amount of solid study and research, added to my existing 30 years' interest in and study of that and related subjects.
My understanding is that the colleague, who is also an ethical man and a gentleman, absolutely refused to have anything more to do with such a project. His view expressed to me is that it was the academic equivalent of laundering stolen money.
Perhaps some here will agree, others may not. But as in the sciences, or even in the arts - it is not the done thing to try to gazumph another person's topic once they have announced it and begun publishing. Wait, then reply, is the usual standard.
I've been writing up in 'longhand' online, the result of my eighteen months analysis of the Voynich manuscript's imagery. It has taken an awfully long time, because in the past I thought I should try to write for amateurs, simplifying the language, substituting online sources for the ones I'd actually consulted, and trying to find copyright-free, online illustrations to substitute for those in my own library and picture collection. Very time-consuming.
It has been a constant and regular occurrence that when I announce a new theme or area of study, that suddenly it will occur to someone, usually a constant peruser of my work, to "get a better opinion" from someone who has never, until then, referred to the topic, the manuscript, the period of history, or the plant id.. etc.
What I then find, is that my original conclusion about the map, or about it's connection to the portolan charts (by the way, that was my own comment to P.Han's blog - I checked)... is suddenly re-invented by someone else after being asked to "investigate the idea" or "offer an opinion about...." my work.
Initially, I could count on a time-lapse of perhaps a couple of months, or (when Steve D came on the scene) a couple of day, but to see in a thread where I had announced, in advance, the topic I was about to treat that other peoples "opinion" was being sought - without so much as the courtesy to see first what I intended to say - did get my goat. I've had seven years and more of this happening. Why can't the original be read, and acknowledged, and responded to in the normal way?
It seems to have become, by some very peculiar form of non-logic, almost a "matter of principle" to first refuse to acknowledge that work emerging from my research is original, and then to find it so useful that someone else is asked to re-work the subject asap.
The pattern, I repeat, has been there for years. It is so bad that a specialist in the history of portolans (one I know because of our common area of interest) was actually asked to write a paper "considering an idea" that there was a connection to the Voynich map. That "idea" was nothing of the sort. it was the conclusion which I had drawn after a considerable amount of solid study and research, added to my existing 30 years' interest in and study of that and related subjects.
My understanding is that the colleague, who is also an ethical man and a gentleman, absolutely refused to have anything more to do with such a project. His view expressed to me is that it was the academic equivalent of laundering stolen money.
Perhaps some here will agree, others may not. But as in the sciences, or even in the arts - it is not the done thing to try to gazumph another person's topic once they have announced it and begun publishing. Wait, then reply, is the usual standard.