Expert Opinion

[proto57]

There has been a lot said recently about expert opinion. I think specialist opinion(I prefer the word "specialist" to "expert") is very valuable, as I have made clear. However one should always be cognisant of what an individual's expertise is in. If, for example, they are an expert in medieval astrology, but have made a statement regarding medieval herbal manuscripts in which they are not an expert then one needs to be aware of this. The blanket using of the term expert is problematic without being very precise about what their expertise encompasses. Of course, being a specialist in an area doesn't mean you are right as specialists sometimes get things wrong. Ideally one would have the opinion of many specialists on a specific subject.

When it comes to the Voynich itself I would say that we should be very wary of considering anyone an expert on the manuscript as so little is currently know about the manuscript and so many questions are left unanswered. There can really be said to be no experts on the Voynich I think. However, as I have said, there is scope for specialist opinion on parallel or related subjects.

With respect, Rene, you are an expert. And in fact, you are rightly considered the premier expert on the Voynich, however one defines such a person, as you have easily the largest and most valuable corpus of knowledge on the manuscript, in addition to having uncovered much original research of your own.

Rich

Your ideas as to who qualifies as an expert on the Voynich manuscript are not my own as I stated on your thread. I don't consider Wilfred Voynich or Newbold to be experts.

I don't wish to stoke controversy or insult, but I certainly wouldn't consider Rene or anyone else including myself an expert on the Voynich manuscript. It seems in order to be an expert you would at least be able to answer with certainty who wrote the manuscript and what it says. So little is known for certain about the manuscript that I think it dangerous to regard anyone as an expert on it. One can be knowledgeable about existing research into it and debates which have taken place, but I don't think that is the same as being an expert.

In fact if you are right that it is a forgery then Rene and most other people have been completely wrong about the manuscript, which hardly qualifies them to be experts.

I think, again, you are entirely missing my point... and at the same time, demonstrating my point in action. And in doing this, you have actually implemented it to a radical extreme...

Yes, absolutely, it is your prerogative, and anyone else's, mine included, to decide what outside opinion we think valuable, and for all the reasons you and others have outlined. I have no problem at all with your disagreeing with me that Rene is an expert on the Voynich, if you genuinely don't feel that he is. I do think you will have a steep hill to climb to make that point, but of course that is your right to feel that way...

But I admit I am surprised to see anyone use my own hypothesis to argue against him being an expert! That is a bit "circular", I think. It is similar to an old argument against my hypothesis that goes, "If it was a forgery, it would have been disclosed as one by now, therefore it is not a forgery". Which is, of course, entirely circular, and instantly makes every bit of art and literature, in all collections, genuine.

But your new one, here, is a bit the opposite... and the logic of it gets all tangled up and is difficult to unravel... but, in essence, you are saying I, me, Rich, cannot call Rene an expert on the Voynich because I also believe the Voynich to be a modern fake, and Rene does not, therefore I cannot call him an expert?

Well I disagree, because I can feel Charles Singer, Panofsky, Rugg, Pelling, Bax, and so on, and whomever, are experts on the Voynich, or related fields of botany, paleography, art history, whatever... and even agree with almost everything they have noted as to the appearance, construction, and content of the Voynich, and yet explain their wildly different opinions as to what all that they report means as being by far best explained by the Voynich being a modern fake. I don't have to discount the work of Rene nor anyone to do so.

(But I have to say I find it stunningly ironic that you, Rene, are tossed off the list somehow, and worse yet, on the basis of my theories!)

To use someone's allegory (and I have used it, too) of a criminal trial: It is exactly why we have juries. If all the witnesses, all the experts, the defendant and the victims, all simply had to walk in a courtroom, tell their stories, and we would automatically know who was guilty or not... then we would NOT need juries! Juries decide what witnesses, which experts, which evidence, what testimony, they consider valid. They throw out contradictory evidence all the time. I've been a foreman on a Federal Grand Jury (USA), and the first instruction to us was that if we considered any testimony invalid, we could disregard it, and further, we could reject all the testimony from that source.

We were a "jury of the peers" of the accused (two police officers). Am I a cop? A forensic handwriting expert? A certified public accountant? A witness to the crime? For that matter, was/am I an expert in law? No of course not. I, and the other jurors, were tasked with sorting through all the testimony, all the participants, and determining the "truth of the matter".

As we all are, here, with the Voynich. We all have all this stuff in front of us, and we damned well have every right, and every obligation, to figure out what to do with it all. And like a criminal trial, there is no way to USE it all, so we have to sift through it all... as the comments in these two threads amply describe.

So all this seeming angst over trying to define what "testimony", what evidence, and so on, one should or should not accept, well Mark I have never disagreed with that at all. My points here are different, and somehow it seems, elusive... when making the decision what testimony and evidence to accept or reject, ask yourself if you are doing it to find the answer to the Voynich; or, on the contrary, to support a belief as to what you already think the Voynich is.

Rich.

[Edited in an attempt to clarify some points]