The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

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On the other hand, as is has often been pointed out, only 5% of historical documents have survived (or been found by historians). 
So one can well argue that there is a 95% chance the book in question is still among the lost materials and therefore is NOT the VMS.

Please rethink this...

The other/real VMS is an entirely hypothetical item. There is no 95% probability that it existed.

I'm not certain, Rene, and maybe I've missed the pertinent points to this recent back and forth about the "probability" of the existence of what I describe as the Baresch Manuscript... but whether I got the gist of the points of you and asteckly correct, here is my take on it...

- Yes, Rene, I do agree that the existence of a Baresch Manuscript is certainly hypothetical. The purpose of the hypothesis would be to determine if it was the Voynich, or another manuscript entirely, and then describe what it could have looked like, and maybe help in finding it, if it still exists.

- The point about the 5% and 95%, I took differently than you, I think: I may be wrong, but I think it is not that there is a "95% probability that it existed", as you wrote, but rather that, as other arguments are made about the possible existence of missing or non-existent evidence that support 1420 Genuine, one could similarly state, "Since 95% of all manuscripts are missing, we can't say the Baresch Manuscript is not among them".

- But, I would not really make that case that "it must be out there, because we can't see all lost manuscripts", and I don't think Andrew was making that case, I think he was only pointing out the misuse and therefore the the fallacy of the "absence of evidence" adage, at least in the context it is frequently used to apologize for the great many "missing" cases of evidence that would support it if they were found.

I hope I got that right, and if so, I agree heartily with that point. And again, certainly I am not claiming that the Baresch Manuscript must exist, or even probably exists, only that I hypothesize it could exist. And if it does, would like to try and define and describe what it most probably would have consisted of, and hopefully, find it... or, if not find it, find a good reference to it. 

Rich