When Peter Kidd contacted a university professor to ask why she had apparently plagiarised an image of a medieval manuscript from his blog, the response was unexpectedly rude.
“No one cares about your blog” was the reply from a secretary working for Carla Rossi, an adjunct professor at the University of Zurich who runs the Swiss-based Research Centre for European Philological Tradition, known as Receptio.
Threats of legal action if the Oxford-based independent researcher pursued his “delusional” claims followed, while the former curator of medieval manuscripts at the Bodleian and British libraries was told that “blogs are not scientific texts…so their value is nil”.
Perhaps the most surprising element of this exchange is the suggestion that Professor Rossi’s secretary – Noemi DeSantis – may not have existed at all as her profile picture was a stock photo used countless times on other websites. Indeed, investigations by Mr Kidd and other Twitter users revealed that many of the profiles of Receptio staff and board members, even supposed scholarship winners, used stock photos imposed on an identical backdrop of a well-stocked bookcase.
