Expert opinions about the VMS

[Sam G]

Yes, Sam, ardor and enthusiasm in defending one's points are a good thing, but that should not transgress into the tone of disrespect which I somewhat noted in your post, so I join David in his kind request.

Well, yeah, admittedly my frustration got to me a bit there, but maybe you can see where I was coming from.

About the experts and their opinions.

First of all (just to make that clear for those who don't follow the discussion from its beginning in another thread), what we mean by "experts" here are not "experts in the Voynich Manuscript". In other words we are not speaking of those people who have dedicated much time studying the VMS and accumulated much knowledge/information about it (like e.g. Nick Pelling), but we are speaking of experts in specific fields of science which are (or might be) relevant to the VMS. Like e.g. "experts in cryptography" or "experts in paleography", or in botany, and so forth.

Now and then an expert (in the meaning described above) expresses his/her opinion or judgement on this aspect of the VMS or another. The question is: how should such opinions be treated? Should they be trusted blindly by way of "authority", since experts are people who know what they are saying? Should the further discourse be built on the expert opinions? Or experts generally are just the same people as the amateurs are, in that they are also prone to mistakes?

Yes and no.

The matter is most easily understood if you take your field or profession and imagine that you are an expert yourself. Actually, even if you are not a scientist, you most likely have a profession (or study for a profession), so you are much better acquainted with this field of human activity than most people are. In that sense of the word you may call yourself an "expert". Yes, you may be not the very best in your profession, but you are better than many, anyway.

So now, ask yourself: are you perfect in your profession? Do you not make mistakes? Have you mastered each and every aspect of your profession? Can each and every aspect of your profession ever be mastered by a single person in principle? If good self-criticism is your friend, then probably your answers will be in negative.

That's exactly the way with experts. There's no such person as an "ideal expert", except if we speak of people who laid foundations. (As an example, Marx can probably be considered as an ideal expert in Marxism). But that's not the case with the VMS.

First of all, everyone's expertise is limited. This is especially true with such sciences as history, archeology or codicology, because they are related to historical facts and artifacts, and our knowledge of historical facts and possession of artifacts is naturally limited - with the time, new facts are discovered and new things are found which can substantially change our ideas of the past.

Next, the expert's opinion largely depends on the context. One thing is a passing judgement. Another thing is judgement based on having learned the facts about the VMS systematically and having dedicated sufficient time to the study thereof. I am afraid that the opinion of many experts has been of the passing kind. Myself, I have noted quite a number of times that my advice (expressed in the course of my professional activity) was - I would not say wrong, but rather only partially adequate: that because i failed to, or was not able to, provide for all the circumstances of the subject matter.

Third, the expert's opinion often is either biased (to greater or lesser extent) by the "background" or suffers from the uncertainty in the related questions. A good example is carbon dating of the VMS, which I think ruled out some earlier propositions by good experts. Have those experts possessed the carbon dating results, no doubt they would alter their judgements.

To put it short, an expert's judgement should not be taken as 100% truth in advance. One should take into account that 1) everyone's expertise is limited; 2) the expert may have failed to account for all the relevant facts; 3) the expert's opinion may be biased.

That does not mean that experts' opinions are useless and we don't need them. On the contrary. What is most valuable in experts is that they save our time and effort of studying the subject field ourselves. An expert is a person who provides a response to the point. The response may turn to be right or wrong, but it will always be to the point and always useful.

Well, this all basically sounds pretty similar to the way I look at things.  Like I said, my argument here was basically a response to Rene's treatment of that single brief statement from Ewa S-S as the last word on the Zodiac imagery, and wielding that single "expert opinion" as a club against any other viewpoint or against new evidence that has been presented.  Basically I was trying to show the problem with that way of thinking by applying it to his own viewpoints.

Normally I prefer to go through the evidence for myself, making use of expert opinion as appropriate.

When (and if) Friedman says "the VMS is not a cipher", this does not mean that the VMS is not a cipher, notwithstanding all the reputation of Friedman. As our professor of philosophy used to say in my university years, there is no such thing as "authority" in science. The moment when the argument of authority comes in, the science chokes. But if Friedman (to return to my example) says this and explains why he thinks so, you can then make your own conclusions, because Friedman served you with facts and with the trail of experiment and/or deduction which led him to this conclusion. You (let alone experts other than Friedman) are then free to analyze whether there are any flaws in his discourse or there are not.

Sure, but the point remains that his opinion was that the VMS was not a ciphertext.  Of course you're free to disagree with that.  But if such a great emphasis is going to be placed on expert opinions (not so much by me, though I don't consider these opinions irrelevant either), then it is important to honestly report what these were, and I think saying that we can change what Friedman meant by redefining the word "cipher" is pretty audacious.