Expert opinions about the VMS

[nickpelling]

I suppose the real question of this thread is: what is an expert?

For me, an expert is someone who has first gone through a period of almost obsessive fact-gathering (primary evidence where possible) as well as deep immersion in sources contemporaneous and/or closely relevant to the thing concerned. And then, at the end of all that, is someone who is left with the clarity of insight and strength of mind to be able to break down related arguments (both their own and other people's) into their component steps.

By that token, the true mark of an expert opinion is not so much that it is oracular as that it is well-informed, clear-headed, insightful and genuinely analytical.

The problem is that this sometimes leads the expert to take a view on a subject that can prove hugely unpopular. Back in 2004, for example, it became completely clear to me that we had a good number of immovable data points and deeply telling observations that all signalled a mid-fifteenth century origin for the Voynich Manuscript. Yet all that ever summoned to my door was wave after wave of hostility from Voynich theorists: arguably, those waves have yet to abate, despite radiocarbon dating.

The sorry truth is that in the Voynich Manuscript study community (and in many others like it), expert opinion has never been more asked for, more deeply needed, and yet more openly reviled when it arrives.