Fakery?

[oshfdk]

However there are also many people who have a secret ambition that they might be the next Jean-Francois Champollion or the next Michael Ventris and who persist in believing that the manuscript text is meaningful and may be deciphered one day. The community seems to be split into two camps. Neither appears to be making much progress.

It's not as clear cut a division. I'm probably closer to the second camp, at least I'm trying to decipher it. On the other hand, I admit that the whole MS could be a weird hoax, with no meaningful plaintext.

Speaking of secret ambitions, I had to look up both figures you mentioned   Probably I've heard about them before, but the names didn't ring any bells.

I think deciphering a single manuscript is nowhere near the level of unlocking a whole culture. So, unless VMS turns out to be something completely unexpected, I'm not sure it's comparable to the deeds of those very noble dudes.

On the other hand, I see no problem spending time on various attempts to decipher VMS, even if I'm not sure of the outcome. Could be meaningful, could be meaningless. Who cares if the process is so much fun?