From	Cooke, Barry	Date	Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:27:21 -0400
To	itrdbfor@listserv.arizona.edu
Subject	[ITRDBFOR] Wegman on calibrating response functions
That may be "the point" that you're choosing to focus on. My point, quite apart from yours, is that (1) there were oversights in MBH98, (2) that paper appears to have been rushed to publication, (3) M&M03 appear to have been shunned by the scientific review process, (4) Wegman et al. have got a couple of good points on the statistics of tree-ring calibration worthy of discussion, (5) the issue of calibration error cuts to the core of the debate, as it is what underlies the breadth of the confidence envelope around the hockey stick during the MWP. You criticize their analysis of the MBH98 social network, but what do you make of their more substantive argument regarding errors in calibration response functions? Barry -----Original Message----- From: ITRDB Dendrochronology Forum [mailto:ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 6:28 AM To: ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: Joe Barton's hockey stick hearing coming up At 05:46 PM 7/17/2006 -0400, Barry Cooke wrote: >The proxy data on which multi-proxy reconstructions are based may be >statistically independent, but the reconstructions themselves are not. >This is not because of any lack of "independence" (i.e. objectivity) >among networked researchers, but a measurable fact of arithemtic. To >the extent that multi-proxy reconstructions are built on the same proxy >data, they are statistically non-independent (i.e. correlated). Fair enough. But I believe the point (or at least the implication) is being made that these networked researchers are failing to adequately review the work of their peers. It would also be naive not to expect that Mr. Barton and the political wing of the "Climate science is bunk" crowd will use those connects to argue for the "worthlessness" of most everything produced by the network. (Note the recent public comments by Senator Inhofe). Dr. Maryanne W. Newton Research Associate Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology Cornell University