Bruce WolffenbuttelDec 28, 2022
John Overholt

There’s an absolutely astonishing story brewing in the medieval manuscripts world of a Potemkin Village scholarly institute built out of plagiarism and stock photos. I can scarcely do it justice except to link to Peter Kidd’s thorough deconstruction of #receptio #receptiogate

Part 1: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-i-staff.html

Part 2: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-ii.html

Part 3: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-iii-my.html

Part 4: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-iv-my.html

Part 5: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-v.html

The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair, Part I: The Staff

Dec 27, 2022 at 8:00pmWeb
Show threadJ. Nathan Matias 🦣Dec 27, 2022
@overholt 😮
Show threadElle SmithDec 27, 2022
@overholt am I weird or out of line for feeling some sorrow for doctor/professor Rossi, whose career is imploding (yes she detonated it)?
Show threadJohn OverholtDec 27, 2022
@ElleSmith She could have just said “Sorry, I’ll correct that oversight” and I doubt it would have gone any further. The “nobody cares about your blog!” is how we ended up here.
Show threadElle SmithDec 27, 2022
@overholt inarguable that she lost much claim to sympathy by deprecating another (the real) scholar
Show threadDoctor HistorianessDec 28, 2022
@ElleSmith @overholt she lost all claims to sympathy when she started inventing people to speak for her and threatening legal action against Peter Kidd.
Show threadElle SmithDec 28, 2022
@historianess @overholt yes, certainly there are perpetrators and a victim in this story.
Show threadMartin SeegerDec 29, 2022

@overholt @ElleSmith She must have had some feeling of invulnerability to act like that.

I experienced a similar story about an employee accused of stealing 400$ from the coffee box. She denied having done that and in some sense she was right. But we had to start digging. An in depth analysis showed she stole about 200.000$. It also turned out that every testimony (from school to employers) was falsified.

A lot of crimes were uncovered because she couldn't keep her hands from the cookie jar. It was because she felt so safe, so clever.

Show threadSRDDec 28, 2022
@ElleSmith @overholt not possible once you see her / her husband’s reaction…
Show thread📎🖐️ Alan Taylor 🎬 📚Dec 27, 2022

@overholt

Their website encourages visits to the London office...where it is not listed...  

https://www.companieshousedata.co.uk/a/4683

Address profile: 20-22 WENLOCK ROAD, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, N1 7GU

Overview of 269 companies located at: 20-22 WENLOCK ROAD, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, N1 7GU

Show threadJessamynDec 27, 2022
@overholt I am interested in this story but also would love an executive summary. This Ms Rossi made up the institution (or at least a large part of it) to get grants and also... other bad shit? Is RECEPTIO a thing people knew and thought was a reputable institution?
Show threadMark SaltveitDec 27, 2022

@jessamyn @overholt Short story is, allegedly, yes and no, in that order. It's hard for a USian to fathom because there is no funding for academia like Switzerland's.

She also helmed a (government funded?) arts magazine called "energie9" I believe, circa 2014. And there was an odd precursor scandal in 2018 involving a French professor thatvawarded a "Nobel Prize in Philology" to a Romanian scholar; a publication there exposed a very similar nest of sham organizations.

Show threadMark SaltveitDec 27, 2022

@jessamyn @overholt here is the toot about the related scandal with the "Nobel Prize in Philology."
https://mastodon.cc/@aaronm/109581599415095215

The other fun thing was a call for applicattions to a residency her institute was hosting in their "historic residence" in Lugano - that they "demand" the resident to pay 700€ per month for. Giving the impression, accurate or not, that the institute is just their house, and they wanted a paying roommate.

AaronM (@[email protected])

@[email protected] I haven’t seen reference to this side of the story on Mastodon yet. #Receptio’s origin story says they were founded at the “behest of the International Philological Society” https://www.receptio.eu/story Except that’s a scam too. https://www.scena9.ro/en/article/romanian-academy-nobel-florent-montaclair-chomsky #Receptiogate

Mastodon.cc
Show threadJessamynDec 27, 2022
@taoish @overholt Oh thank you, very helpful.
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt it seems unclear to me that anyone really paid any attention to the institute except for funders. She got some pretty big grants to publish these things OA but instead she ripped off someone else’s research wholesale and then got pissy when asked about it. She did host an event—or maybe said she was going to?—but she’s not a name nor is her center.
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt but also the details are hilarious af, like that all her responses are pdfs on academia.edu?! And she was editing her website and fake book as people were watching! Plus she keeps emailing in different personas.
Show threadJessamynDec 27, 2022
@wynkenhimself @overholt Thank you, it was so confusing to me from someone externalto nearly all of this who wasn't privy to it from the beginning. cc/ @tim who was also looking.
Show threadCyber YukiDec 29, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt ... wow. 🙊
Show threadVolker Schröder 🌎Dec 27, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt Their YouTube channel documents some of the recent activities (mostly online because of covid). There are several projects ongoing at the same time, not "only" the fragmentology - it all seems way too ambitious and grandiose. At least a few junior scholars (graduate students or postdocs) seem to be involved, and they might be the ones who will suffer the most from this.
https://www.youtube.com/@fondazionereceptio9581/videos
Fondazione RECEPTIO

Canale Video della Fondazione RECEPTIO, viale Castagnola 27, 6900 Lugano

YouTube
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@Marphurius @jessamyn @overholt oof, that's no good!
Show threadVolker Schröder 🌎Dec 28, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt Good news: it seems at least one of those post-docs working with RECEPTIO was made up (exposed by @mlobelart on Twitter)
Show threadTim CarmodyDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt +1 re: executive summary, I’ve been following this from the beginning and still saw five new blog posts and groaned
Show threadDavid ZaslavskyDec 27, 2022
@overholt I know nothing about medieval manuscripts research but wow, what a story this is
Show threadMarc JacobsDec 28, 2022

@diazona @overholt Same here.

I love looking at illuminated manuscripts online but know ~0, can’t read Latin, and so on.

But, wow. This is stunning.

Show threadbillheywoodDec 27, 2022
@overholt
I'm wondering what due diligence the Swiss National Science Foundation carried out
Show threadVoronMay 24, 2023
@billheywood @overholt Well, they probably ran it through a spell check, then cashed the checks
Show threadRDS (shawphd on Twitter)Dec 27, 2022

@overholt

Have you seen this, @robertpaulett ?

Show threadCatherine McGuireDec 28, 2022
@overholt Methinks the lady doth too much protest! Seriously, that kind of aggressive "defense" should make neutral witnesses very suspicious. It makes me (a retired MH therapist) quite suspicious of intentional cover-up or histrionic personality. The blogger seems to have laid out his evidence calmly and logically - I hope authorities check on this situation.
Show threadDorothy BishopDec 28, 2022
@overholt
One of the weirdest things is that if Noemi exists, she took it upon herself to deal with correspondence about a sensitive matter without consulting with her boss.
Show threadBoris BarbourDec 29, 2022

@deevybee @overholt

But does anybody believe it wasn't the boss pretending to have a secretary?

Show threadDr. Mary Dockray-MillerDec 28, 2022
@overholt and it seems to me like an awful to of work for not actually that much money? like $30K?
Show threadBarbara H RosenweinDec 28, 2022

@overholt

Thank you for alerting those of us on Mastodon to this!

Show threadJohn_G_R_WilsonDec 28, 2022
@overholt This is truly a bizarre mess.
Show threadKam Reads and RecsDec 29, 2022
@overholt I first learned about this on the bird app and have been sitting here, chin in my hand, scrolling through the blog entries and just utterly aghast at all of this, but also morbidly curious.
Show threadSuzanne PaleyDec 29, 2022
@overholt Oh wow, I saw the original post, but geez, the whole disappearing stock photo and fake office thing is just too good! And as of today, there are parts 6 and 7 out too!
Show threadThe Evil MicrowizardMay 24, 2023
@overholt Part I's link doesn't appear to be working...?
Show threadThe Evil MicrowizardMay 24, 2023
@overholt Aha, I just located the new version on the site. Apparently there were some edits that needed to be made so a new page version was created. https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-i-staff.html?m=1
The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair, Part I: The Staff [re-posting, with edits]