Is it an invented or lost natural language? Some form of cryptography, or merely a hoax? Nobody knows for sure. The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most well-known texts written in an unknown writing system. Some are written in codes or ciphers that haven’t been cracked, while others are purposefully designed to remain incomprehensible forever. Below are 10 books that are actually unintelligible (except, maybe, to the authors themselves). While some texts are basically unreadable, not many are truly impossible to consume. It’s often used hyperbolically to describe difficult classics, and that’s exactly what a Google search of “books that are impossible to read” leads to. Predictably, their acknowledgement that “ concerns have been raised about the validity of this research” triggered an inevitable cascade of follow-up stories as the media exuberantly documented the embarrassing climb-down.Impossible is a word that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to reading. In the end, for Bristol, there was only one way forward: the excruciating public statement. In moments, the story had raced round the globe through news wires and social media. Even if the first critical arrows had shot back through the internet only seconds later, and even if Bristol had instantly clawed back their press releases, it was already too late. Whatever the case, they put out excited press releases in good faith. Perhaps Cheshire took his newly published article to Bristol University’s media team himself. From there, all we can do is speculate about the ensuing events. Also, as mentioned above, for most non-academics, publication in an academic journal stamps the work with a kitemark of innate validity. The problem from the media’s perspective, however, is that formal rebuttals can take months or years to be published, and a breaking story like cracking the Voynich manuscript has a shelf-life of maybe hours. The Voynich manuscript has not, as yet, given up its secrets, but it has still taught us something about the way that scientific claims can make their way into the media, says Dr Claire Hardaker. Instances like these are precisely why sites like Retraction Watch exist. One need only look to cases like Andrew Wakefield’s infamous links between the MMR vaccine and autism, or the harrowing stories of Roy Meadow’s “statistics” about sudden infant death syndrome. In fact, scientific claims being fiercely repudiated by the academic community is nothing new. That community is then well within its rights to celebrate the work as a masterpiece, or burn it to the ground as a monstrosity. In academia, the idea is that a scholar works on a theory or method, and then, as the very first step towards getting their work judged by the wider academic community, they publish it in a (relevant!) peer-reviewed journal. Also, peer-review is not standard confirmation in the scientific arena. When challenged by the Guardian, he replied: “The journal paper has been blind peer-reviewed and verified by other scholars – that is standard confirmation in the scientific arena.” But as we’ve already seen, the choice of journal was problematic, and this casts doubts over the reviewers’ expertise. This takes us to Cheshire’s defence as the discontent about his work grew ever louder.
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