From:         "Cooke, Barry" <bcooke@NRCAN.GC.CA>
To:           ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: [ITRDBFOR] Wegman on calibrating response functions
Date:         Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:27:21 -0400
Reply-to:     ITRDB Dendrochronology Forum <ITRDBFOR@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>

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 

