Thanks for the question. Three main points:
-- Rossi does not cite the Sotheby's catalogue in her publication, even though she now admits she is "quoting" it
-- The Sotheby's description refers to my blog site
-- I am the author of the description in the Sotheby's catalogue
@mssprovenance
(1/n) Hi Dr. Kidd, this plagiarism scandal has been really shocking to follow so far. I do have a question that I hope you can clarify. Rossi claims in her latest reply () that she was just drawing from the 2017 Sotheby's catalogue.
This thread is a fantastic summary, and I'm glad that it credits so many people who have been really instrumental in uncovering what has been going on. If you're new to
#RECEPTIOGate
, or think you may have missed something, read this!
Okay, so
#Receptiogate
is trending in multiple countries. If you missed the beginning of this (still unfolding) drama over plagiarized research, fake research institutes, and medieval manuscripts, here's a compilation to get you started with your bowl of popcorn. ⬇️🍿
Well, I have heard from David La Monaca, who confirms that Carla Rossi is his wife.
I copy an extract below.
Maybe I am missing some nuance, but he seems a bit upset?
If he thinks this will help their cause, I suspect he may be mistaken ...
Thanks everyone for the continued interest and support.
I'm going to try to spend less time on Twitter today, and I have a backlog of overnight DMs and emails to work through.
I anticipate doing another blogpost later today ...
This thread is a fantastic summary, and I'm glad that it credits so many people who have been really instrumental in uncovering what has been going on. If you're new to
#RECEPTIOGate
, or think you may have missed something, read this!
I've written Part 1 of a summary here:
Let me know if I have made mistakes or omitted anything important, and I will try to rectify the errors.
Thanks!
Welcome to Day 6!
A reader has suggested that it would be useful if I could explain how auction catalogues are authored, and how they should be cited.
I'll try to do a blogpost on this subject today or tomorrow.
If people have other such questions, let me know.
It's probably not worth getting out the popcorn, so don't get too excited, but I've written another blogpost:
The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair VI: The Backstory
Well, maybe nobody _cares_ about my blog :-(
... but according the Google's statistics, my most recent post has had about 40,000 views since yesterday :-)
I have now updated the original blog (with changes clearly indicated) with relevant additional information:
I'll try to do a separate blog about yesterday's other relevations
I love the idea that *I* am the one "hiding behind a small blog", and he is using an anonymous Twitter account with an avatar that is LITERALLY a guy in a ski-mask!!!
THANK YOU for this thread: this is exactly what I would have had to explain myself, so you've saved me the effort.
(There is more detail I could add, but I hope it won't be necessary.)
I haven't commented on
#receptiogate
so far and once in a while even felt pity for Carla Rossi in the last few days, as her career seems to have been self-destroying in only a few days. Her latest post on academia however is again so full of lies and falsehoods.
A Thread. 1/10
I have deleted the tweet in which I mistakenly passed on incorrect information about the death of a man named Antoni Ros[s]ell.
I have done this not to hide my mistake, but to prevent the error being disseminated further.
The kinds of OSINT expertise at Bellingcat are WAY WAY beyond my abilities. But if any readers are suitably competent, maybe you'd like a challenge?
For several hours I've periodically been getting childish emails (see below)
...
I see this whole thing as an opportunity to learn from each other -- I have learned a LOT from wonderful Twitter peeps during the last few days.
So here is a really useful tip that some people may not know about, relating to my tweet shown below:
Going through my email inbox I found an annual request for donations to , responsible for The Wayback Machine. I could not do my work without this site, which I use every day, so I usually donate. I encourage you to, too!
So. The P-word.
This probably won't be very entertaining to read, so lower your expectations, but for those invested in this saga, it may be interesting.
The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair, Part V: "Alleged Plagiarism"
#RECEPTIOGate
And I have been in contact with two other scholars who say that they did not know that their names and images would be used on the RECEPTIO website ...
I am getting a lot of messages from people who either came to this half-way through and are confused, or are not on Twitter at all, so I will try to summarise yesterday's developments later today in a new blogpost ...
@mssprovenance
(1/n) I did some more digging on their London offices (their series of photos of them on the main page):
This photo belongs to this apartment and is taken from its exposé.
If RECEPTIO's "Paolo Enrico Bernasconi" is a real person, he keeps a remarkably low profile! (Just 1 hit on Google)
And he looks a lot like a Minnesota drugs lawyer!
Another major Swiss newspaper has picked up the story, perhaps because a distinguished Swiss academic -- not "just a blogger (who dabbles in manuscripts)" like me -- has gone on record accusing Rossi of plagiarism:
#ReceptioGate
The psychology behind this sort of tweet really fascinates me.
Do they really think that someone is going to read it and think: "You know what? I've just realised that Kidd is the bad guy in all this!"?
Or even: "If Kidd is a plagiarist, that proves Rossi isn't"?
Weird.
I know we're all obsessed with the stream of discoveries about
#receptiogate
, the revolving-door website updates, & Rossi's doubling-down claims of innocence that are easily disproven, but I also want to talk about her
#fragmentoogy
work, which is troubling in several respects...
In Christopher de Hamel's most recent book, in reference to one of the 19th-century's great scholars of medieval manuscripts, Frederic Madden, Keeper of MSS at the British Museum -- i.e. not a university academic -- he has this among his endnotes:
I was up unusually early and have to go to bed now.
So until tomorrow thanks everyone -- it's been a wild ride!
(And to think that there are lots of people who didn't check Twitter at all today ...)
I'm *genuinely* sorry that I seem to have made a mistake (I was misled in good faith, and I've already owned up to it) ... but this does look like a hostage video!
I've been waiting exactly three months now, and I still haven't been contacted by the Swiss police, like I was promised 😐
It's almost as if they're not taking Ski-mask Dave and Rossi's claims seriously 🤔
I think that what
@ReceptioGate
is trying to explain to all of us imbeciles (because we clearly know nothing about scholarly standards) is that we cannot expect Rossi to cite her sources AND use quotation-marks every time she is quoting extensively from other people's work.
They don't bother me in the slightest, but maybe someone would like to see if they can identify or geolocate the sender?
I could send them (or post here) the raw file?
You can contact me directly at peter
@manuscripts
.org.uk (which will bounce to my real address)
It seems that Prof. Rossi's PDFs about this affair have now been removed from her page, but at two of them are still available from here:
Get them before they mysteriously disappear again!
Some people point out that there may be confusion between different men with the same name.
But the (anonymous) blog commenter writes:
"The previous version of this page, available on the Wayback Machine, which had a photograph of each member, confirms this is the same person."
There is yet another PDF on Prof Rossi's Academia page.
It would be very easy to show that each of her assertions against me is untrue, but (i) is it worth the effort, and if so, (ii) what do people think is the best medium? More blog-posts?
It seems that she did not even bother to read the text she copied. In the provenance section it includes the phrase " ... sale in our rooms ..." which makes perfect sense in the context of a Sotheby's catalogue, but makes no sense in the RECEPTIO publication!
I had great success last time I appealed to
@MedievalTwitter
, so thanks in advance!
Can anyone identify the alphabetical index/summary from which these cuttings come? There are references to the Decretum Gratiani and/or similar legal texts.
It will surprise no one that the misleading use of a page showing traces of heraldry (which actually occurs in a completely different manuscript in Philadelphia), has now also been silently expunged from the online reconstruction.
Before and after:
Let's take a look at Carla Rossi's claim that she didn't take the colour image of a miniature of St Mark from Peter Kidd's
@mssprovenance
blog. Kidd had pointed out () that the only possible source of the colour image was from his site. [cont]
#Receptiogate
More attempts to get my Rossi blogposts deleted have been fruitless; Google has reinstated all of them.
When I have time I'll be putting the blogposts on my own webspace and ensuring that they are archived and indexed, so that they can be read in perpetuity.
#ReceptioGate
The blogpost at has been removed, and returns a message
"Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."
I assume Google removed it (without first contacting me) it on the basis that it contained "private" family photos.
[...]
This is another bizarre feature of the story. According to an email from Noemi De Santis a few days ago, Prof Rossi was persuaded by lawyers to assert her copyright on a *methodology* for studying manuscripts! (Whether you believe that is up to you.)
In her "Alleged Plagiarism" PDF, she states that in my blogs I "misidentified the manuscript in an eighteenth-century auction catalogue"; according to her book, the MS was lot 36.
And according to my blog? I suggested that lots 36 and 40 are both possible!
There are a number of people who have provided me with fascinating information via the Comment feature on my blog, which I think does not allow me to respond privately to them.
...
The St Mark miniature (whose owner had not given permission for its reproduction by Rossi) has now been replaced by a black and white version (and the verso of the leaf removed entirely). Before and after images:
2/2
It would take considerable time and effort -- and would probably be pointless -- to write an item-by-item commentary on this document, but if people have specific questions that it raises, I will do my best to answer them.
The person claiming to be Noemi De Santis, who deals with Prof. Carla Rossi's emails, gets only two hits with Google, both on the RECEPTIO website.
Her portrait is a stock photo, as others have pointed out to me.
Does she even exist?
Can anyone send me a copy of the tweet by ski-mask Dave, in which (if I remember correctly) he insists his wife cited the 2017 Sotheby's catalogue properly?
(It's for another blogpost ...)
This is bizarre. A genuine medieval miniature is described as a fake, probably by the Spanish Forger, and then (because it does not look anything like the Spanish Forger's work!) it is suggested that it may be a fake Spanish Forger!
Because I knew back in November that I would want to link from my blog site to the auction site and its image, for the auction on 2 Dec. 2022, I archived it with the WayBack Machine and used THAT link in my blogpost, thus ensuring that it would not end up as a useless dead link.
The RECEPTIO account notes that I've taken an interest in Rossi's articles on a BL manuscript.
That's true. It's because the text on her personal website bears an uncanny resemblance to an article published by a British scholar in 2006:
#Receptiogate
Apparently the work of a "blogger (who dabbles in manuscripts)" has a value of "nil", but the opinion of a ... [checks notes] ... harpist is of significant value:
Oh my, it now looks as if the names of the funding and affiliated orgs have been removed from the homepage! (yesterday on left, today on right)
#receptiogate
Yet another excoriating report from the Leiden University-based fact-checking website:
'RECEPTIOgate: Book on the persecution of the Jews also contains cut and paste work without source'
#Receptiogate
Good point. I'm surprised that no one has commented on this before:
On the one hand RECEPTIO claims to deplore "vandalistic" "biblioclasm" and the "illicit trade" in single leaves, and on the other they offer for sale a leaf from the (so-called) de Roucy Hours!
Anyway, she has inspired me to finally write a blogpost that reveals the original plagiarism that started the whole
#ReceptioGate
saga.
I've never drawn attention to it before, and she has -- for reasons that will become obvious -- never mentioned it.
If you know you are likely to want to cite a webpage in future, you can make sure that the the Wayback Machine (a.k.a ) makes an copy (if they have not already).
[...]
Despite recent edits and deletions, the RECEPTIO website still states that "RECEPTIO is an independent, non-commercial research centre under private law (run by the International Philological Society)."
Do have a look at the article linked below by
@incunabula
Receptio say they were set up at the behest of "The International Philological Society", which itself seems to be an outright scam & which awards a "Nobel Prize for Philology" which the Nobel Committee in Sweden has never heard of.