You are confusing several issues here, Rene. And you are misstating your original charge against me, and continuing this claim I am a "conspiracy theorist". It is really unfair of you to continue doing this... And I thought you had agreed it was unfair, on a couple of occasions. Why resurrect it now?
"I understood from the moderator team here that they tend to agree with the good rule of not dragging issues from forum X into forum Y (in this case here)."
That sounds like a plea for censorship. I can imagine you do not find it convenient having hard questions following you around the 'net. I've avoided it for the most part, and only came here to set the record straight on my relationship and opinion of the Beinecke. But isolating unanswered questions to "forum X", and then not ever addressing them, or incorrectly answering them, on "forum Y" might be helpful to keeping people in the dark, but it does not help further the investigation.
"Different people read different (combinations of) fora, and the many relative newcomers have only been able to read a fairly recent fraction of the historical discussions."
But you don't want other discussions brought here? Which is it?
"Most of the points in Rich's contributions in this thread refer to past discussions in other fora. When Rich writes:
Quote:most others on that list, and in the other facets of my argument, are, and get ignored. Their are many arguments which, alone, condemn the Voynich as a forgery, but remain unaddressed, or improperly and incompletely addressed at best. I believe one or two of them are enough to make a firm case... and yet are left to stand around like elephants in the room.
"... then almost nobody here can properly judge this. All these points have been discussed
ad nauseam in the 'mailing list'."
It does apply to many issues, which do not get discussed here... as you and a couple of others are considered somewhat "authorities" on the subject, and you do not bring them up. I've seen many such cases. I do read this, and all forums I can... and have seen this often. Questions are asked by "newcomers", and some who are even familiar with Voynich research to a greater extent, and you of course give your opinion, and even cite your opinion as fact. And you leave out much information, which is found elsewhere.
But that is not the point of my "elephants in the room" statement, in this thread: I was referring to your focus on one item on my "Red Flags of Forgery" list in my presentation, which was not fully explained by me, and therefore somewhat vulnerable to criticism. The other "elephants" are the other items. You do not, here or elsewhere, ever address these or many other serious problems with the Voynich adequately, some not at all, and some others by repeating unproven or outright incorrect information. You only continually claim to have done so.
On the contrary, I address every shred of every point on the Voynich, and of your theory about the Voynich, so that a person can form their own opinion.
"To the point that I decided to leave it since there was no point in discussing them further."
There is every point in doing so. I've seen people here
hungry for answers, or at least, alternative theories on points being discussed... even naming me, and others, personally, hoping for input.
"I may also refer to Helmut's post You are not allowed to view links.
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I respect Helmut's opinion, but also respectfully, he is incorrect. I have have not discussed all the points in my presentation, or the basic concept of the lecture, previously: "What characteristics does a forgery exhibit, in what ways does the Voynich possibly share those forgery features?"
"If, initially, I thought that Rich referred to the Beinecke's reluctance to show the manuscript..."
You are re-writing history here, this was not your claim. It was about the testing, not the "showing". You had written (and already retracted), this statement,
"Rich makes the inexplicable (because completely opposite to the truth) statement that Yale/Beinecke are reluctant to do forensic investigations of the MS."
That was about
testing, forensics... not simple access. But now you add,
"... then this is because he has already complained about this in the past. Access to the MS has been severely reduced by the Beinecke since 2009."
I'm not sure I "complained" about access (since you have now made a new claim, you force me back here to re-defend myself) as much or more than anyone else, nor even to the extent you do, above. And if I have noted they don't let people maul the thing quite so much, I've certainly been the first to understand why that would make sense... and have even, actually, said so. And as I've also pointed out, I've been graciously allowed to see every scrap in the Beinecke Voynich collections, in every box and envelope. I've never asked to see the actual Voynich, as I don't want to add my germs to it, needlessly. But I have also seen it, twice, when at the Folger, at your presentation there, and then at the Beinecke when they had it out, at the presentation of the Yale (and your) book there.
So I'm not sure where this new charge of yours, against me, comes from, but I need to point out is is tiresome, and inexplicable, that you continually seem to feel a need to do this.
"Other complaints have included that the report of the radio-carbon dating has supposedly not been published."
Aha! But it has not been published! It is not "supposedly". The producers have a copy of the report, of course Hodgins (sp?) does (he prepared it), the Beinecke does (they offered to share a copy with me, if the producers wrote them and gave permission), and you do. "We"... the public at large, certainly does not.
This is an area of fervent interest to many. A well known writer on the Voynich, and on cryptography history, in fact, asked me "Why has the radiocarbon report never been released?". He didn't ask because I mentioned it in my presentation, nor because he knew it was an issue close to my heart...
he just wanted to know if I knew. He, like very many others, are fully aware it has not been released. And my fellow presenter was under the mistaken impression it had been released, and ironically, cited your chapter in the Yale book!
This is a big deal. We only have other's (including yours) opinion on the data in that report. We are not given the procedure and data in order to make our own judgement. Hodgins, at the 2012 Frascati Voynich 100 Conference, tantalizingly gave a good example of this, in one of his slides... which I luckily "thought fast" enough to take a picture of:
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If it were not for that slide, even that data would be unknown to us. And by the way, lest you invent another complaint on my part, I do accept the C14 dating, in general: That the material of the Voynich's leaves comes from the 15th century. The issues I am concerned about, rather, go to the assumption used to combine the separate dating of those leaves... as much as 60 years apart, into one, neat, date. Could it be worse than 60 years? And what data was kept, what rejected, if any? And so on... We don't know, because the
report has not been released...
"Of the McCrone report, only a summary has been published, and this report fails to mention the highly suspicious (according to Rich's recent presentation) appearance of some chemicals that supposedly betray a modern fake."
First of all, I thought the McCrone paper WAS the report, not a "summary". Is there a report there, too, that has not been released?
True McCrone does not "betray" the Voynich as fake, and I never claimed they do. You are again misstating my words and intent. But they do mention those chemicals, and even call the "copper and zinc" "unusual", and only muse they may be due to use of a brass inkwell. I wrote them, asking whether that is because it is "unusual" for brass inkwells to leach into ink; or because it is "unusual" for the C14 era. My points are that they are unanswered questions; and used in my hypothesis, forgeries are often discovered by noting both unusual features and unanswered questions.
"Now, for me, these are the ingredients of a conspiracy theory. Several different parties are collaborating in hiding information."
And as Regan famously retorted, "There you go again!". The report has not been released... you have not answered many questions, there are many errors and assumptions and opinions stated as facts, in your contributions to books, and on your site, and on various "fora". But why this charge that my noting this is a "conspiracy" theory? But of course incorrectly claiming I am a "Conspiracy Theorist" is meant to impugn me with a distasteful label. It is yet another insult, and I really don't appreciate your continuing to use it.
"I don't see why I should apologise for pointing it out."
That is up to you, of course. I'll leave it to others to judge what lack of an apology, or giving one, and days later, retracting it, means.
"Anyway, this too is old material from another forum."
Ummm... no it is not, entirely. Scroll back and see.
"Back to the first lines of this post.
The scattering of information over several fora, including parallel discussions about the same topics, is one of the main reasons why I am reducing my active participation. I simply don't have the time for it, and it brings very little."
And I've heard this before, it is a repeating cycle: You get frustrated that you are called to explain your bold claims, that you are asked to back them up with reasoned argument. You then unfairly attack the questioner, or "shoot the messenger", on baseless grounds, rather than answer, and only incorrectly claim, instead, that the questions have all been answered elsewhere. Then you retreat.
It is how paradigms You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view., and not unexpected. No "conspiracy" necessary, nor implied by me. And I have no intent nor desire to come here, or follow you wherever you go, correcting your numerous claims and misstatements about the Voynich, or anything. But each and every time you do unfairly insult me, or misstate my aims, my words, my ideas, I certainly will defend myself. If you stop doing that, you will be free on "fora Y" to continue to make any claims about the Voynich, unchallenged, as is your wont.