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

[asteckley]

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.

I think part of the disagreement may be that you seem to be viewing evidence as a binary thing -- so if something isn't strong evidence,
then it is not evidence at all. But I view evidence as always on a spectrum from very weak to very strong.
(I thought you yourself even pointed that out somewhere in a recent thread.)

I think you would be hard-pressed to convince people that the cracks in the O-rings that 
were formally reported and correlated to cold weather, were not "evidence". They were evidence that existed long before the disaster.
The problem was that it was just viewed by the decision makers as evidence that was not strong enough to affect launch decisions.

I was probably wrong in suggesting it is a matter of semantics. In fact, "Red flags" are by definition "evidence",
albeit just one type of evidence. More specifically, a red-flag is by definition evidence that is (or was at some point) viewed by
at least some as too weak to warrant consideration.  Evidence that is strong enough to get consideration without
question,  never gets categorized, even later on, as a red-flag -- because it is taken for granted to be worth considering.

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

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).

Of course, that is true -- having different views is not evidence of anything
(except perhaps that there is enough weakness in all the evidence that reasonable people are disagreeing.)

I could say a lot about the lack of provenance. Real fakes don't have any, ...

That is also true ... but typically only in retrospect.  The only reason that fakes pass for authentic for any length
of time is because, until they are discovered, they DO have evidence of such things as provenance, because either the evidence
has been entirely manufactured, or the strength of the evidence has been judged to be much stronger than it turns
out to be. (And then it typically gets re-evaluated by the same judges as weak in retrospect.)

Evidence has to be weighed collectively.
A lot of weak evidence can still outweigh other evidence that is much stronger.
But, ideally some single piece of evidence is found that outweighs all evidence to the contrary.
Or at least enough pieces of evidence that taken together have that same effect.
(Like perhaps a newly found written confession by Voynich himself... or a description of manuscript that is so detailed
that it could refer to nothing but the VMS, and found in a source that is simply unquestionable.) 
At that point, it would seem reasonable to graduate the evidence to the level of "proof."

I, for one, just don't happen to think we're there yet.

The similarity of some drawings to optical instruments exists.
The similarity of drawings to American plants exists.
The similarity of a one drawing to an armadillo exists.
The offering of money to Newbold is documented.

All of those things are evidence. None of them are proof.

And some -- like the Newbold offer -- can provide evidence in favor of different possibilities to different degrees.
I do agree that if its strength is technically equal in favor of all candidate theories, that it will contribute net-zero
and could be discarded.
But the question isn't whether these things are or aren't evidence; it is what the strength of the evidence is in
each case, and especially cumulatively for or against any particular theory.

I don't (or at least haven't much so far) outlined my own arguments for the strength or weakness of the various evidence related to theories of authentic vs forgery.
I only take issue with the outright dismissal of things that are obviously evidence that needs to be weighed in at least to some degree and not simply declared as "not evidence" or worse "non-existent".