Speculative fraud hypothesis

[dexdex]

One of the key advantages of the self-citation method is that statistical regularities—such as the Zipfian distribution—emerge organically from the process itself, without requiring deliberate adjustment. This is because the method is grounded directly in observations of the Voynich text. I begin by identifying fundamental, corpus-wide patterns—for example, the clustering of similar words across pages. These clusters suggest a mechanism of repetition and gradual variation. The central argument, therefore, is that an iterative process of copying and modification is sufficient to account for the statistical features. The observed word type frequencies can be interpreted as the outcome of a self-reinforcing resonance effect produced by continual copying. Frequently occurring words are more likely to be copied, thereby generating numerous variants. The accumulation of such variants, in turn, increases the probability that the original form will reappear during subsequent cycles of copying. This way the hypothesis accounts for the clustering of similar words within the Voynich Manuscript.

Therefore there is no need to determine or fine-tune external parameters. As noted in Timm & Schinner (2019):

We deliberately did not fine-tune the algorithm to pick an 'optimal' sample for this presentation. Such a strategy is by itself questionable. Nevertheless, an exhaustive scan of the parameter space (involving thousands of automatically analyzed text samples) verified the overall stability of the proposed algorithm. About 10-20% of the parameter space even yields excellent numerical conformity (≤ 10% relative error) with all considered key features of the real VMS text (entropy values, random walk exponents, token length distribution, etc.).

Furthermore, in regards to "no one has shown how the VMS Author could have figured out the proper parameters." - the author(s) didn't need to 'figure out' the parameters. Had they accidentally landed somewhere else in parameter space, we would be very similarly stumped. All that's required for the hypothetical process to be plausible is that the fraction of the parameter space that explains the Voynich is significant enough that they could have landed there. Which it sounds like this simple process is.

A simple process like this is entirely congruent with '15th century hoax' hypotheses.