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

[ReneZ]

It all starts to become 'semantics', but I would say a red flag IS evidence. It's just not proof.

I have to disagree here.
They are not evidence in favour of anything.

Having different views about the MS origin is not evidence of a fraud, because this is not unusual and happens with genuine manuscripts as well, as Lisa clearly stated (and I regard her an expert in the sense of the title of this thread).

Exactly the same holds for the lack of provenance (also confirmed by Lisa). (*)

So: not evidence, but a reason to look more closely (as in the case of the O-rings - though the parallel isn't perfect). And that was my point before. This closer look has been made. In the case of the Shuttle the cause of events could be clarified (we had a similar issue with the first Ariane-5 but I digress). In the case of the Voynich MS nothing irregular could be identified. That's also quite a clear outcome because the methods available to an early 1900's faker were quite limited. Even the vastly superior methods available to the Galileo fake, 100 years later, were detected.

Another point raised in the same talk (IIRC) was the observation that Voynich offered money to Newbold in case he could prove that the MS was by Roger Bacon.
That this should be evidence in favour of a fake is a non-sequitur. It just does not follow.

If he could prove Voynich's suggestion that the MS is a Roger Bacon, then that would increase the value of the MS very considerably, regardless whether it is genuine or a fake.

(In fact, if he indeed faked the MS, he would have known either that the text is meaningless, or he would have known how to decode it. Either way, how could have left Newbold dangling and lose his reputation? Now this is certainly subjective, but worth wondering about).

Note (*): I could say a lot about the lack of provenance. Real fakes don't have any, but the Voynich MS does. However, this won't bring anything in the present discussion.