New video: "Is the Voynich Manuscript fake?"

[ReneZ]

Diane pointed out to me that I should have included Panofsky and in retrospect I think she's right. The reason why I omitted a lot from my initial draft is that I wanted to limit the length of the video: it is much better that the audience watches 90% of a compact video, than 30% of a comprehensive one.

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I frankly do not understand why Panofsky had good intuitions at first, but then decided to go along with the sunflower fantasy. Diane believes that certain societal factors were at play, which is certainly a possibility. But I simply don't know.

I think it was a good choice to concentrate on Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt. Beside Panofsky, Richard Salomon (Panofsky's mentor) was also spot on, so whom to pick? In the case of Lehmann-Haupt, his credentials were well presented and I am not so sure that Panofsky would have been 'the better expert'. On top of that, HLH includes the statement that this opinion is shared by many.

With so much supporting evidence you necessarily had to cherry-pick and present only the most appropriate for the video.

I do agree that, most probably, Panofsky decided to trust the opinion of a herbal expert. It certainly would have been uncomfortable to publicly disagree with him. He may not have been all that certain of his first impression too. It really is not usually possible to pinpoint the date of a historical item to within a few decades.