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

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Rich, there's nothing at all suspicious about the C14 results. The imprecision of C14 dating is exactly why it doesn't represent absolute and sole proof and never claimed to. This is the case for every single C14 test ever conducted. The imprecision is expected. It's a feature, not a bug. C14 and all scientific tests, if they DON'T prove inauthenticity, are only one part of the evidence. 

If the parchment had been dated to the modern era, that would've settled the matter. But it wasn't. So the scientific evidence, while helpful, is not conclusive. That's why it has be combined with expert opinion, which is subjective. 

We cannot, currently, prove absolutely that the manuscript is authentic. I am happy to concede that there is a possibility that Rich is correct and that the manuscript is a modern creation. It's possible that every single manuscript is a fake. Anything is literally possible. But where the VMS is concerned, the two options - medieval vs. modern - are not equally possible. The possibility that someone, whether Voynich or someone else, could convincingly craft all of the features I listed above is so remote as to be negligible.

Well I agree with you, and appreciate your pointing out that neither genuine nor forgery can presently be proven. However, in description after description I find it wrongly stated that forgery HAS been dis-proven, when it has not. It is even in the introduction to one major Voynich reprint. It is in almost every talk and documentary, where it is stated as certainties that the "signature" is real, that we "know" it was the Voynich being discussed in the Carteggio, that we "know" the 1903 reference to a manuscript, and now the "Wildmann" (sp?) reference are certainly the Voynich, and much, much more.

So yes, I appreciate your acknowledging the current state of uncertainty, and I also, always make that point... that I don't know, that I've proven nothing. But it would be great if this was more generally the case, so that new researchers are not "led down the primrose path" of false certainty as genuineness.

Rich