Assumptions baked into the VMS carbon dating

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Given that the folios nowadays belong and for a long time have belonged to the same object and share the script, the image styles, and are of compatible sizes, one cannot ignore the probability of 4 random samples from this object producing a coherent largely overlapping result in the carbon isotope measurement.

But I must insist: even if the whole VMS was scribed in the space of a few years (which I am willing to concede that it is still the most likely scenario), it does not follow at all that the vellum of all its bifolios was also made in a similarly short time span.   There is no common-sense argument or physical evidence indicating that the sheets came all from the same vellum maker and from the same lot, or that they were made shortly before the Author acquired them.  

The C14 results only say that the three Herbal bifolios that were tested were, with high probability, made within a 67 year interval centered around ~1420; more specifically, in the interval 1391-1458.  They don't say that they were made within a couple of years of each other And, again, it is about equally likely that the vellum of bifolio f67-f68 was made around 1335 or around 1410.

Your logic would totally apply if we were identifying when 4 totally distinct objects were produced.

Actually, we are dealing with 50 different objects, which must have come from at least 15-20 different animals, individually slaughtered, skinned, and processed.  They only became the same object when the the Author used them to write his book (which definitely looks like a compilation of at least four completely unrelated books, except that written in (mostly) the same language and/or code and illustrated by the same artist).

All the best, --stolfi

PS. The best violin bows are made from a wood that violin makers call "pernambuco", but is otherwise known as "brazilwood".  It has a purplish-red core from which one once extracted a prized red cloth dye.  The brazilwood tree was once extremely common in this country, so much so that it is claimed that the country was named after it.  But it was so thoroughly exploited starting in the 1500s that today it is an endangered species, and the export of brazilwood logs or timber was strictly prohibited in 1996.  Therefore, many violin bows manufactured today outside Brazil are supposedly made from stocks of "pernambuco" that were amassed by violin makers more than 30 years ago...