New Post: "I Do Listen to the Experts. Do YOU?"

[asteckley]

Well to me this seems to be about how we rely on experts. It is not because someone has any PhD, that they can be relied upon to assess a medieval artefact. 

Agree!

I also don't think Rich should cherry pick from their findings. He likes that they said the plants are American, but he doesn't like that they did so in the framework of their Mexican theory.

Is it really necessary to accept all of the arguments of a researcher(s)  in order to accept any one of their arguments? Particularly in this case where the part that Rich seems to be accepting (i.e. the similarity to American plants) is that part which is related most directly  to J&T's area of expertise. And the part of their argument that Rich is rejecting is their implications regarding the origin of the manuscript.  He is accepting only what their 'expert observations' imply regarding when the manuscript could have been authored, not where or by whom.  

It is observational conclusions that one should not cherry-pick. And it is the implications of those conclusions that one should selectively filter in order to reconcile the observations with the wider body of evidence.

I have by no means bought into Rich's modern forgery theory, but so far, I only see that he is following a correct path of rational research.

Again though, why would the European Voynich put so many American plants in his forgery?

It's a very valid question that demands some explanation.  One can easily come up with several plausible scenarios.

• Perhaps he was just grabbing all kinds of sources as fodder for illustrations, particularly since he was mashing up representations of the real plants with whimsical components (so he assumed no one would identify them or their geographic ranges.)
  
•  Perhaps he only hired someone else to produce the forgery but forgot to specify "avoid anything that might be post-Columbian". And perhaps he did not have the familiarity with American plants to notice the flaw. (He was, as you say, European, not American.) Or couldn't afford to correct the problem once noticed.
  

To be clear, I don't buy any of these. At the end of the day, the explanation may be that the resemblance to American plants is entirely coincidental.  BUT, the observation of resemblance remains. And the fact that that observation does imply a Post-Columbian time of origin also remains unless and until some other observation (or collective set of evidence) invalidates the implication.  And even then, it will remain a fact that some illustrations resemble American plants.

Until then, it is a question of whether there are enough cases of observational evidence that they collectively can all be explained by some particular theory. Various implications might get invalidated, but not the observational facts. Rich's modern forgery theory MUST explain the C14 dating and any counter theory MUST explain the resemblance of plant illustrations to some American plants.