University pulls story of manuscript code cracking

A UNIVERSITY has withdrawn a claim that one of its academics cracked a 15th-century manuscript.

Earlier this week, Bristol University announced that Dr Gerard Cheshire, a research associate, had solved the famous Voynich manuscript in just two weeks, with his findings published in the journal Romance Studies.

Dr Cheshire described how he had “a series of eureka moments” to successfully decipher the manuscript’s codex, which revealed the only known example of proto-romance language.

But the Russell Group University has since removed an article from its website about Dr Cheshire’s work after “concerns have been raised about the validity of this research”.

Among them was Lisa Fagin Davis, a Us-based paleographer and codicologist, who wrote on Twitter: “Sorry, folks, ‘proto-romance language’ is not a thing. This is just more aspirational, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense. I tried several years ago to reproduce Cheshire’s Voynich results, because initially I was intrigued.

“But when you apply his Roman-letter substitutions and then try to translate the result, you have no choice but to be subjective. It’s gibberish. The methodology falls apart.

“Once the foundations crumble, everything built on them – which includes the published paper – falls.”

The manuscript is a medieval, handwritten and illustrated text, carbondated to the mid-15th century.

Bristol University said in a statement: “This research was entirely the author’s own work and is not affiliated with the university, the Faculty of Arts or the Centre for Medieval Studies. Following media coverage, concerns have been raised about the validity of this research from academics. We have therefore removed the story regarding this research from our website to seek further validation.”