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Improper or incorrect credits
- Improper or incorrect credits
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Improper or incorrect credits
ReneZ > 18-04-2017, 07:56 AM
This is not my favourite topic, and I only start a new thread because I don't want to be off-topic in another one.
Only just a few days ago I wrote in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :
Quote:It's a real pity that this spectre of 'who said what first' is haunting so many discussions.
It is obviously to be expected that if many dozens of people are looking at the same thing, many people will come to the same conclusions completely independently.
and various related statements.
In an interesting blog post by Koen about the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , he is unfortunately misled by a particularly bad example of this, when he writes in footnote [2] about who probably first noted the oak and ivy comparison with the Manfredus MS.
The source for that appears to be You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which further refers to a comment at Stephen Bax' blog.
The trouble is that there is no information about 'who was first'. The selection of Edith Sherwood is arbitrary.
It is also the only one of the three (Edith, JKP and myself, who all noted this independently from each other) that is definitely not the right answer.
For those who care about this topic, the comments on Stephen Bax' blog ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) are quite clear, I think.
If one wants to credit someone, one has to get it right.
Not knowing something may be unsatisfactory, but this might just reflect reality.
In this situation it is not acceptable to make things up, because people will be misled in believing it, as happened in the case of Koen's blog post. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
davidjackson > 18-04-2017, 02:43 PM
I think I've argued much the same in the past.
There's no point getting hung up on "who said what" when in general discussion, unless it brings something to the argument. If you're not sure, say so or side step the whole thorny issue.
Of course, if you're writing formally, or basing your statement upon a previous argument, then yes you have to make it clear. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
Koen G > 18-04-2017, 04:25 PM
It depends from case to case. In this particular case, I'd agree that crediting the "find" itself is hard and not essential to the argument, since the parallel is so strong that it was noted by various people independently.
That said, I'm trying to make a habit of crediting as specifically as possible since in the past vague statements of mine have led to misunderstandings. But again, in this case I agree with the sentiment that crediting the first find is less important and difficult, if not impossible. If you want to propose a correction to my post then I'll gladly edit it, but for lack of anything else I'll leave it like this for now.
Now perhaps more importantly, and this is with the moderator hat off, it's typical for Voynich studies that the man who is still considered the expert in the field finds it necessary to create a thread on the forum about an overconfident attribution copied from one of Diane's posts. I agree that Diane places too much importance on attributions and that this can be jarring, but this is really something that goes both ways. Next time you can just let me know how I can increase the accuracy of the attribution and I'll happily update the information.
Bottom line, politics in Voynich studies are annoying. I'm impatient, I want to research, to discover, to know what others think about my arguments and to hear theirs. This won't work if old politics keep getting precedence over new insights. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
ReneZ > 18-04-2017, 07:51 PM
Quote:It depends from case to case. In this particular case, I'd agree that crediting the "find" itself is hard and not essential to the argument, since the parallel is so strong that it was noted by various people independently.
That said, I'm trying to make a habit of crediting as specifically as possible since in the past vague statements of mine have led to misunderstandings. But again, in this case I agree with the sentiment that crediting the first find is less important and difficult, if not impossible. If you want to propose a correction to my post then I'll gladly edit it, but for lack of anything else I'll leave it like this for now.
Now perhaps more importantly, and this is with the moderator hat off, it's typical for Voynich studies that the man who is still considered the expert in the field finds it necessary to create a thread on the forum about an overconfident attribution copied from one of Diane's posts. I agree that Diane places too much importance on attributions and that this can be jarring, but this is really something that goes both ways. Next time you can just let me know how I can increase the accuracy of the attribution and I'll happily update the information.
Bottom line, politics in Voynich studies are annoying. I'm impatient, I want to research, to discover, to know what others think about my arguments and to hear theirs. This won't work if old politics keep getting precedence over new insights.
Koen,
I have no intention to play the 'Voynich police' and try to point out all incorrect statements that one finds all over the internet.
And here I am just talking about the demonstrably incorrect ones.
This problem of trying to figure out "who said what first" happens to be a topic that I had mentioned here in this forum just a few days ago, and which concerns this forum. To continue in the other thread would create an off-topic.
The information that happens to be the topic of this particular question is spread over five different blogs, in chronological order:
- Edith Sherwood
- Stephen Bax
- JK Petersen
- Diane O'Donovan
- yours
Sorting it out here in this forum seems to be the only logical approach to me.
Whether you want to update your blog is your decision. I think you can decide from what's written in Stephen's blog what is known and what is unknown.
However, just in order to be clear, let me add what I know.
- I don't know exactly when I noticed this similarity. It was not before 2009, but well before 2012, so my best guess is 2010 give or take a year. I did not talk about this to anyone.
- It was part of my May 2012 presentation at Villa Mondragone
- JKP mentioned recently that he first saw it round about the same time, but my impression is that he is as uncertain about it as I am. It is entirely possible that he saw it first. JKP and I have not had opportunity to exchange opinions about the MS until after this forum started.
- Edith mentioned it on her blog much after I had seen it. As a matter of fact, she did not make the comparison with the Paris MS, but with another one (this remains an exercise for the reader).
- In spring 2014 I exchanged some mails with Alain Touwaide, since he approached me in relation to his edition of Sloane 4016. I pointed out this similarity to him then. (I had forgotten about that when I wrote the comments to Stephen Bax's blog).
- I sent the comparison also to Ray Clemens when he was preparing the photo facsimile. He liked it enough to include it in the book. He asked me if he should credit me for this, but I answered that it had been seen by several different people independently. (This is the occasion I mentioned at Stephen Bax' blog).
I do think that this parallel could be quite relevant, by the way.
I also know very well how to acknowledge and credit people to whom I owe information.
This is completely independent of whether I agree with his or her theories about the Voynich MS.
The person I disagree with most strongly in that respect is Rich Santacoloma, but I am grateful to him for several references that I would otherwise not have known about, and it is a matter of standard courtesy to acknowledge this, as I do. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
Koen G > 18-04-2017, 08:35 PM
Thanks, Rene, that's clear. If Sherwood is not the one to credit then I will adjust the note to say that it was noticed by various people independently - should be neutral enough.
Just to be clear, I do agree that the "tree with vine" parallel is an important one, and might at one point be key to understand the VM's sources. It would be weird to deny any kind of link between these images. However, it is interesting for what it is, but also for what it isn't. As you also indicate on your site, it does not appear to have a direct copy relationship with the Italian herbals. I would obviously hypothesize a common ancestor for the "composition", but that's impossible to prove if we don't know the sources of the Egerton 747 images... -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
-JKP- > 18-04-2017, 11:41 PM
Out of curiosity, I went back to Sherwood's site because I did not remember having seen her ivy ID (I usually reference Sherwood's IDs in my blogs and when I looked at it just now, it did not seem familiar and I didn't mention it when I wrote about Plant 35v). I've looked at many of her plant IDs, but not all of them, perhaps 60% of them and most of those in 2008.
So that had me scratching my head, but then I noticed the copyright date on this particular Sherwood page is 2013, which is the same year I posted my blog, so I don't even know when she originally posted this particular ID or whether she updated them from time-to-time. I spent most of my time on herbal manuscript and botany sites.
I'm not really concerned about it. I was just curious.
Even when I wrote the 2013 blog I assumed others had already noticed a similarity but hoped I could add something to the discussion if they had. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
Diane > 19-04-2017, 01:46 AM
My principle is simple.
There's no good reason, and no excuse for reading, repeating, re-using or even distorting material you read first in some other Voynich researcher's work, yet allowing others to imagine the matter a fruit of your own research.
You use it; you say where you got it. Simple. Otherwise, it might be thought the omission is a means to convey the false impression that you, yourself, are the person who did the work.
It's not so bad if you forget, and add an appeal for information about precedents - I do that all the time.
But any of the old-timers know when a new insight, opinion, conclusions from research first appeared on the scene. And if you want to check priority, just look at the publication dates (not web-pages, of course. Papers published in blogs or in hard copy give this information).
As example - I'd be very grateful to hear of any prior hint of connection made, in Voynich studies, between Guglielmo Libri and Fr. Beckx before I published several posts from the research I was then doing. Had anyone noticed the connection, or investigated, written about or brought it to the notice of other Voynicheros before?
In what is just one instance of the myriad over the past eight years - and certainly not only in connection with my work contributed online - I see the matter now being made use of and actually published by another person (at least one) without my having been given the courtesy of request for permission, nor subsequent acknowledgement on re-use.
As I say, that small detail is just one among the considerable number of such 'errors of omission' - which affect my ability to track ideas to their source as much as anyone else's.
I'm certainly not the first to have then decided, as I then did, not to share any more of that investigation online - it won't appear now until it appears in hardcopy.
There's no good reason to hamper newcomers' efforts to survey earlier work and trace those now-prevalent assertions to their source. To re-evaluate the evidence on which commonly-held notions were first based is the essence of scholarship - in the real world.
There's no good reason for giving a false impression, by simply announcing as if the idea were your own, that some new finding is yours when you've actually read or heard it from the person who took time and trouble to do real research
No good reason. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
ReneZ > 19-04-2017, 07:28 AM
The shameless copying of entire web sites has long been one of the negative sides of the internet.
I stopped counting the times when I bumped into my own text at some unknown web sites, during Google searches.
The Ninja forum itself is being copied here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Not sure if that is an initiative from one of the Forum administrators. -
RE: Improper or incorrect credits
nickpelling > 19-04-2017, 08:56 AM
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RE: Improper or incorrect credits
Anton > 19-04-2017, 11:43 AM
Quote:Not sure if that is an initiative from one of the Forum administrators.
Not mine.