Dating of VMS

[don of tallahassee]

Well,  in the end everyone is free to make up their minds on what he / she wants to believe or not.

Even if it involves the Beinecke Library and/or Sterling lab of Yale University twisting the Univ. of Arizona's arm on which samples to take, or either of these universities not following scientific standards.

(Actually, as I was present, I can report that the selection was made in dialogue between the two: the owner of the MS and the expert in radio-carbon dating).

Rene - I am so glad you and Diane both seem to agree that the best dating available according to scientific methods us for the VMS is between 1404 and 1438 (even though Diane thinks the content came from earlier).
I thought you two had agreed to disagree on everything. 
Now, if we can just get the other Voynicheros (or is it Voynicheroes?) to adopt these dates, it might help cut down on the scenarios that others keep putting forward that date the manuscript to a later time (up to the early 20th Century, in one or two cases).
It doesn't seem feasible that the folios for a manuscript with foldout pages (not seen before this period in manuscripts) would be prepared much in advance of the writing/inking/drawing/painting. Or that a single forgery/fraud/hoax document of the length and scope of the VMS would be made with no counterparts from any time that I can find reference to. Only a handful of multipage manuscript forgeries/frauds/hoaxes from any time period have ever been found (5 ?) - none like the VMS in any way and all much shorter. Forgeries are normally kept short (often only a single illumination or image) to keep them from being found out. (Most of this info came from you, Rene, when I was asking questions in my normal uninformed way, to whom and for which I am very grateful.)
I remember asking one fellow for information about the scope of manuscript forgeries - all I got was mushmouth talk about how the lack of other such forgeries/frauds/hoaxes didn't have any bearing on the VMS not being one. The person talked all around the issue (didn't even want to give numbers of such forgeries/frauds/hoaxes), I think because he didn't want others to know just how unlikely his ideas were to be true.
Anyway, it is nice to see you two agreeing on something.
And yes, Diane, those bottom quires could have returned earlier dates (or even 20th Century ones?), but I too am going to keep considering the early 15th Century date as probably the correct one (unless and until it is proven wrong) for the whole manuscript. To do otherwise is not believable or rational to me without a lot more proof than I've seen.
Any and all theories or ideas to the contrary will need a whole lot of proof to change the dating of the manuscript for most of us, I think. Not just conjectures, hopes, dreams and wild ideas. If an idea/proposition/theory doesn't fit the scientific evidence, we must reject it.
I think the same is true for all encoding/encrypting/enciphering methods not used or invented or proposed until after this period.
Thank you.
Don of Tallahassee