Gordon Rugg (born 1955) is a British academic, head of the Knowledge Modelling Group at Keele University and a visiting senior research fellow at the Open University, known for his work on the Voynich manuscript. Biography Born in Perth, Scotland, Rugg has a first degree in French and Linguistics and a PhD in psychology, both from Reading University, UK. His background includes working as a timberyard worker, a field archaeologist and an English lecturer. He became the focus of media attention in 2004 for his work on the Voynich manuscript. He is co-author with Marian Petre of two books for students which focus on semi-tacit skills in research. He is head of the Knowledge Modelling Group at Keele University and a visiting senior research fellow at the Open University. Research His main research theme is elicitation methods – techniques for eliciting information from people, for purposes such as market research and requirements gathering for software development. His main work in this field includes the following. A series of co-authored papers on card sorts. A series of co-authored papers on laddering, including one which integrates laddering with graph theory. A paper co-authored with Neil Maiden, describing a framework for choosing the appropriate methods to elicit various types of semi-tacit and tacit knowledge. This work formed one main strand in the Verifier method which he developed with Joanne Hyde. This is a method for critically re-assessing previous research into difficult problems. The initial stage uses a range of elicitation methods to gain an accurate picture of the assumptions and normal working practices used in the previous work. The next stage uses a knowledge of experts’ behaviour and a range of error taxonomies to identify the places where human error is most likely to have occurred. The final stage uses various formalisms to assess whether or not an error actually has occurred. There is no guarantee that this method will catch every error – it is not a method for proving the correctness of a piece of previous work – but it improves the chances of finding key errors. Rugg's other work is multidisciplinary, including theoretical archaeology and teaching methods. Voynich manuscript Rugg used an informal version of the Verifier method to re-assess previous work on the Voynich manuscript, a manuscript widely believed to be a ciphertext based on a code which had resisted decipherment since the manuscript's rediscovery by Wilfrid Voynich in