The most relevant form of a scholar’s reputation is its assessment by peers
within the relevant community.  By that criterion, Dr. Mann’s reputation is
extremely good, as his fellow climate scientists regard both him and his
work highly.  

By contrast, two of your key statements about climate science contain severe
errors.  First, the contribution of Dr. Mann’s original hockey stick paper
was not the observation that the global average temperature anomaly was
rapidly increasing in the late twentieth century.  That part of the graph
(the “blade” of the stick) displayed the results of instrumental records
gathered by other groups.  Dr. Mann’s contribution was the first estimate of
northern hemisphere temperature anomalies for the period 1400-1900 (the
“handle” of the stick). This first effort has stimulated a number of
other papers, from a variety of groups using a diversity of approaches.
This is the strongest indicator of a substantive contribution to the field.

Second, you erroneously claim in your comment above that “scientific
orthodoxy” reduces to an acceptance merely of “some global warming”.  In
fact, the best scientific consensus—supported by detailed analysis of many
lines of evidence—produces specific estimates of warming for various
levels of human CO2 emissions, with upper and lower bounds.
The lower bounds presented in the consensus estimates are high enough to
indicate a substantial threat to human welfare unless we make serious
efforts to reduce emissions.  To accept the best-supported scientific
theory is to admit that we have a serious problem.

Professor Mandia, Dr. Kirkpatrick, and Tenney Naumer are correct that Dr. Mann’s reputation among well-informed scientists is intact. There is no substantial body of criticism of Dr. Mann’s work in the scientific community that hasn’t been substantially refuted. There has been much unsubstantiated criticism of Dr. Mann’s work among the *misinformed* public attributable to the efforts of fossil fuel interests and their allies who have mounted a methodical and heavily funded public relations campaign to discredit Dr. Mann, both personally and professionally.  They have resorted to extremely ethically and legally questionable methods to do so. 

Foremost among these efforts to discredit Dr. Mann was the work of the George Mason University statistician, Dr. Andrew Wegman, who produced a thoroughly discredited report to Congress in 2006, supported by misleading testimony regarding the level of peer review that his report supposedly underwent.  Dr. Wegman’s testimony represented his report as having undergone a thorough peer review process “similar to that employed by the National Research Council,” which was untrue (see p. 54, Section A.1.4 “Response to Stupak” in John Mashey’s investigative report, “Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report”). 

It is Dr. Wegman’s scientific reputation that is now in jeopardy, not Dr. Mann’s.  It is Dr. Wegman’s shoddy and plagiarized research on Social Network analysis and climate science that is finally being subjected to long-overdue scrutiny, thanks largely to the volunteer efforts of John Mashey and the blogger Deep Climate.  The retraction of Dr. Wegman’s pal-reviewed, plagiarized, and deeply flawed paper from the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis is hardly “flyspecking,” as Peter Wood claims.

If the goal of NAS is really to improve higher education, why aren’t they asking questions about George Mason University’s dilatory investigation of Dr. Wegman, and GMU’s tolerance of plagiarism among several of his doctoral students?

tedkirkpatrick, EliRabett, taylor_b, and darkmountain seem pretty certain that all is well with Professor Mann’s reputation.   This is a pretty good illustration of academic cocooning.  Even if one were totally unacquainted with the controversies, It takes no more than a few minutes of googling to acquaint oneself with the situation.  Indeed the whole point of Dr. Hashey’s crusade is to attempt to counter the widespread view that Professor Mann’s scientific pronouncements have been, at least in some prominent cases, compromised by special pleading and other forms of academic dishonesty.  If it is “slander” to mention this fact, Professor Mann has before him hundreds if not thousands of critics against whom he can pursue litigation.  I expect I am pretty far down the list.Peter Wood

 Peter darlin, Eli didn’t say anything about Prof. Mann.  Reading comprehension is one of those things that NAS thinks it supports.  Your reply just drives the nail into that coffin.

 Peter Wood, in your first comment you did not merely say
that Mike Mann has been slandered on the internet. You asserted several
slanders on your own authority. Tonight, rather than accept the
invitation to support your statements you want to back off to
essentially “someone else did it first.” It must have occurred to you
that you do not know these things and that you are in well over your
head. A little more reflection will I trust bring the realization that
in this circumstance it was quite improper for you to have made those
assertions. It is hardly the mark of a gentleman and a scholar to repeat
scurrilous slanders and shrug it off with “oh well, he probably won’t
sue me.” If you value your own reputation it is time to heed the rule of
holes: when you find yourself in one stop digging.

Surely the gentlemanly thing is to apologize, and the scholarly thing is
to study and grasp the import of the primary literature. Since you
criticized John Mashey first, your task begins with his substantial
research found online here: 
http://www.desmogblog.com/science-article-recognizes-john-mashey

That said, you and many of your readers are not likely to know the full
background of what you have jumped into. I’ll try to help with that in a
subsequent comment. By the way, last night my comment appeared under my
Chronicle user name, which is a translation of my surname. I hope my
proper name will appear this time.   … It doesn’t want to change. But
Chronicle readers can translate back to German.

Peter Wood,
Your piece, in addition to being scurrilous slander, is pure ad hominem.  If you truly think you are correct, then why the reluctance to engage based on evidence?  Could it possibly be because over a dozen subsequent paleoclimate reconstructions confirm the essence of Dr. Mann’s conclusions–that current warming is unprecedented for at least 1000 years–and much more than that given the rate?  Could it be because you know that independent techniques–borehole investigations, speleothermic studies also support Dr. Mann’s conclusions?  Could it be that you realize that even if Dr. Mann were wrong, it would not significantly weaken the case for anthropogenic climate change?

Or is it merely that you are congenitally incapable of telling the whole truth?

It could be that he just doesn’t know a damn thing about climate science.

You seem very uncertain whether you do or not, Mr. Wood.  Perhaps, as with your reply to dark mountain’s comment above, you prefer to leave the exercise up to the reader to find out, since you’re unwilling to provide any evidence in support of your claim.  Brilliant!  Do let us know when you find out if you have anything at all to say about any subject about which you know anything.

Our friend chuckkle, the fantasist, has outdone himself.  Why ask me about “Creation Science?”  Perhaps because I was once provost of a Christian college?  Granted, that college neither taught nor espoused “Creation Science,” and I have no interest in the topic, but why let those little details in the way?  In the effort to defend academic orthodoxy on topics such as the rate of man-made global warming, it seems virtually any tactic aimed at silencing skeptics is welcome.  I know how reassuring this is to the true-believers.  ’Look at how many of us there are!  Look how we agree with each other!  Look at how smart we are!  We must surely be right!  And those who disagree with us must surely be stupid or paid-off by oil companies!’  

This fine chain of reasoning is well represented in this thread leading up the capstone of chukkles’ non sequitur.  Still, most of these writers who have bravely defended the reputation of Professor Mann and the climate change orthodoxy for which he stands have prudently chosen to write under pseudonyms. That will save some awkward explaining if  things don’t work out quite as they expect.

Peter Wood

It would seem that “a few minutes of googling”, presumably at climateaudit is indeed all the effort that Peter Wood has put into researching this piece.

The one factual claim in the original article, that Mann’s work “shows exponentially increasing global temperatures in the near term.” is incorrect – Mann’s work was about reconstructing the temperature record from 1400 to ~1900, the exponential increase is in the instrumental record from multiple, independent other sources.

Mr Wood then claims that Professor Mann indulged in “statistical trickery”, “data suppression”, “special pleading” and “academic dishonesty”. He provides no evidence for any of these assertions, despite repeated requests and pointers towards the numerous enquiries, reexaminations, etc, all of which have cleared Professor Mann. This leads one to conclude that he is unable to produce the evidence, that he doesn’t understand the issues, and that he wouldn’t know a Principal Component Analysis if he fell over it.

As someone who claims to be president of the “National Association of Scholars”, he is stunningly silent on the repeatedly demonstrated plagiarism of Prof Wegman and his associates. One would think that plagiarism is something a “National Association of Scholars” would oppose. Apparently not – Mr Wood is far more concerned with opposing “green tyranny” and claiming that there are too many blacks and women getting money to go into science (direct quote: “Cut every program that is designed to advance women and minorities in the social sciences. Women and minorities are seldom disadvantaged in these fields”).

But then, what would you expect from a man who gave a medal to George W Bush for “upholding the noblest traditions of higher education” (presumably including lying, dissembling rhetoric, and a reliance on faith rather than reason, as these also seem to characterise Wood and Wegman’s work) and whose organisation is “funded extensively by politically conservative foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation”?

Did you mean to say non sequitur, Mr. Wood?  I’d think this is a Latin phrase with which you’d be familiar, given your position as leader of such a scholarly organization, and in light of your writing style, which scrupulously avoids facts or substance.  Couldn’t you at least offer a crumb of evidence to support your libelous attacks on climate scientists, or provide a little piece of insight as to how you would overturn this field of inquiry?  Because if you are correct, then you and the scientists who made such discoveries would probably win a Nobel Prize.  In fact, any number of the scientists you accuse of protecting Dr. Mann would love to be the first to publish the science-overturning research showing that there’s no reason to worry about man-made CO2 causing temperatures to rise.  There are plenty of other interesting topics within the field of climate studies to which they could redirect their attention and obtain funds for research.

It might surprise you to learn that, as one would hope, climate scientists are indeed constantly revising, refining, and updating their models and their understanding of climate and all the human and natural effects upon it, as new data and methods become available.  For example, here’s an article in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a group of researchers that includes…well, guess who?  Michael Mann as a coauthor!  I guess he’s not quite as discredited as you thought.  Anyway, it’s an interesting study of how a rapid rise in short-lived sulfur emissions from the burning of coal in China partially offset the warming effect of rising greenhouse gas concentrations during 1998-2008.  “As such, we find that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects,” write the authors.  This is hardly the rigid, monolithic, conspiratorial orthodoxy you describe.  On the other hand, special pleading is a bit of a niche for many of the so-called skeptical scientists.  “Why can’t we get our shoddy and ideologically biased work published in the leading journals?” they ask.

However, if you prefer to defend plagiarism and other forms of scientific dishonesty, as practiced by Edward Wegman and his team when they set out to mislead Congress with their partly federally funded study, then perhaps NAS is an organization that welcomes such “leadership.”  Perhaps you should create a special medal for these sorts of “contributions,” and call it the “Wegman Prize” or the “Joe Barton Award” for deceiving Congress and wasting the public’s tax dollars.

As for the use of pseudonyms, we’re aware of the death threats and hate-mail directed at scientists who study climate and those who defend their honest, hard work.

PW: “…it seems virtually any tactic aimed at silencing skeptics is welcome. ”  This is so hilarious!  After a couple of dozen posters have kept asking Peter Wood to TALK about his evidence, cite some relevant work, etc.  he claims he’s being silenced!  I think Wood spent too many years in academic administration and lost track of what academic discourse is about: talk, exchange, discussion.  If one party refuses to participate, they can’t exactly get anyone to think they’ve been “silenced.”

Every academic I know can provide copious examples of how academics are capable of virtually endless discussion of matters, especially inconsequential ones, in department meetings and committee work.  Early on in my career I finally figure out that this always happened at the first department meeting in the fall–passionate and partisan discussion over some totally trivial matter–and that the reason for it was that it is how academics bond (without alcohol being served).

Come on Peter, come sit at the big table, share with others, don’t pout and sulk and withdraw.  Come on, there’s some milk and cookies here.  Don’t be afraid, we just want to hear your evidence.

Chuck Kleinhans

Since your original article lacks any facts or substance and is based largely on innuendo and supposition, and you’ve repeatedly refused to back up your allegations against Dr. Mann with any evidence, we’re left to infer what views you have about anything, and guess for ourselves from what evidence you draw your conclusions.  What you’ve said is that Dr. Mann’s reputation is “tattered,” Dr. Mashey’s work consists of “flyspecking,” and that “journals” have responded to Dr. Mashey’s “demands” by retracting said flyspecked articles.  In fact, the only journal that has yet retracted any article about which Dr. Mashey has written is the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, and the article was co-authored by Wegman and Said.  The article tracked closely the material on Social Networks in climate science that Wegman presented in his report and testimony to Congress, and is the only work Wegman produced in fulfillment of promises he made in that testimony.  As you might even be aware from your Googling, Dr. Mann’s “hockey stick” graph was the subject of Dr. Wegman’s report.

Since you’re attacking Dr. Mann without providing any evidence, and the plagiarism in Wegman’s record of publication is the subject of Dr. Mashey’s work in the Science editorial you quoted, I think it’s fair to conclude that you feel Dr. Mann’s and Dr. Mashey’s alleged transgressions are far worse than those of the authors whose paper was retracted (Wegman and Said).  You’ve been conspicuously silent about the subject of the Science editorial (in fact what you’ve written here so far is nearly content-free), which is GMU’s much delayed investigation of Dr. Wegman.  Therefore, I infer that you feel Dr. Wegman and his retracted article were treated unfairly, which I construe as a defense of Wegman on your part.  But do let us know what are your views on these matters, including the plagiarism in Wegman’s work, and please support your allegations with evidence, whenever you get around to it.

(Sorry, catching up, it will take a while to get to the original post.).

Dr. Whitaker, do you in fact think that AGW is “hot air” or did you just anticipate that Dr. Wood was going to say that???

Likewise, can you explain the relationship of the AGW topic to your concerns about contemporary universities??

 If the end does not come on time, perhaps like the Y2K issue, folks identified the problem, put resources in to solving it and worked darn hard just so the end would not come.  Or perhaps you think that the tooth fairy did not deliver?  It would be a good precedent to follow on climate change.

Wood wrote a series of CHE blog articles on (sustainability) – Tyranny or theft , starting:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/tyranny-or-theft-part-1

That was occasioned by his participation (in several panels) at:
http://www.americanfreedomalliance.org/microsite/big-footprint/program.htm
http://www.americanfreedomalliance.org/microsite/big-footprint/about.htm

Speakers included many well-known folks, including the Viscount Monckton, of whom Wood wrote:

“The UCLA conference, on the other hand, was rambunctious and rather assertive in its
diagnoses and prescriptions. It aimed at kicking out the props holding up bad science, worse economics, and really awful politics.

Big Footprint
The tone of “Big Footprint” was set by the opening keynote address by Christopher Monckton—Lord Monckton—a hereditary peer and deputy leader of the UK Independence Party who is an outspoken skeptic about anthropogenic global warming. “Skeptic” is perhaps an understatement in his case.

Lord Monckton is an agile, nose-tweaking, derisive foe of those who believe that significant global warming has resulted from human contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere. He is more caustic still towards those who believe that carbon reductions, cap and trade, windmills, and the like can be deployed to achieve any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gases. Let’s say Lord Monckton’s keynote address was not an attempt to find the redeeming features of a flawed movement, or to discover a winsome approach to those who are ambivalent about the alleged threat of global warming.”

Several other speakers took similar tough-minded approaches, though none were so wry in
delivery.”
 
Sadly, Wood’s mention of the wry delivery omitted mention of the swastikas in Monckton’s talk:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/06/monckton_says_that_if_you_acce.php

Is this the guy that said we’re all going to die in hurricanes as the world heats up (to congress, or was it the US senate) and has now changed his mind?  Yes… I think it is.  He’s a snake-oil salesman just like Mann.

Yes, we shall.

Crickey! I have never seen so much ad hom, appeals to authority and straw men in a comments section!

If as some have tried to point out, Mann has been libelled why does he not sue? This has been going on for some years with S.M. etc openly critical of Mann’s work. Montford in his book, “The Hockey Stick Illusion” lays it all out but once again, no threat of legal action. Tenney etc all throw themselves behind Mann with appeals to authority and claim the HS has been cleared but has it really? Not from what I read!

None of this is real science and shame on the lot of you for trying to pass it off as the real thing! If there is nothing to hide, share the data that is mostly paid for by the taxpayers, stop it with the false oil company funding argument (check out where the CRU funding comes from!) and simply let the truth out. It is the real way to save the planet. Even sceptics used to donate into ecological causes until “Climate” scientists muddied the water!

Your models say that temperatures should be rising now, empirical science says temperature has been statistically flat for ten years or so. Your post reads like a religious rant rather than a scientific reality! Full of ad hom, straw men and appeals to authority with a little “global health threat” to try to scare the little people! Pathetic!

Can you find any published science that shows Dr. Mann’s work and all the supporting research is wrong?  I am talking about real science here, not the blogosphere.
 
[In short, steve, why don't you do your own homework?  For example, have you ever heard of the terms, "divergence", "hide the decline", "Medieval Warm Period",  "Roman Warm Period", "Holocene Optimum", "Yamal YAD06", "Briffa [2008]“, “McIntyre and McKitrick [2005]“, ”stripbark bristlecone”, “upside down Tiljander”, “climateaudit.org”…?  Hint: try looking at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit site under “categories” and find “divergence”.  Also note that McIntyre immediately shows all of his “science” – his data sources and processing algorithms/a.k.a. “materials and methods” – regardless of whether his work is published or not, something which the publications, Nature and Science, have not done, contrary to their own standards for publication as supposing to adhere to the practice of real scientific method and principle science!
 
And, steve, real science has nothing to do with where an analysis is published – or even with the funding, where you will find some otherwise strange funders of Climate Science, such as the support of Hadley CRU by Shell Oil and BP - but only if it employs real scientific method and principle science. Another hint: “peer review” by a few selected peers was never intended to convey the idea that the reviewed and then published article constitutes the “given truth”.  Note that that’s another way “Climate Science” is in direct contradiction to the practice of real scientific method and principle science, where the real “peer review” starts only after an article is published via “replication” - and sceptical evaluation by anyone interested.]
 
Ok, I’ll try to explain some of the contrary evidence relating to Mann’s work: Mann’s “science” – that is, the “materials and methods” which result in his “Hockeystick” reconstruction of temperatures before the existence of thermometers - most importantly purports to eliminate the well documented Medieval Warm Period, going backwards to around 1000 AD, when the Vikings were farming and grazing Greenland, in order to show that Modern Warming is “unprecedented”. Why the CO2 = CAGW “Climate Scientists” thought getting rid of the MWP would also erase the previous fairly well-documented holocene Warm Periods, all of which were quite likely as warm or warmer than the current modern warming, is a mystery - except that Mann’s self-named “Hockey Team”, and the bulk of Climate Scientists., implied that they didn’t exist, either, simply by not mentioning them!  Apparently in Climate Science, geologic history starts only about 1000 years ago!
 
But apart from the well known failings of Mann’s “PC1″ ad hoc statistical methods used upon “stripbarks” – trees which no longer even grow to form “rings” except under a remaining strip of bark going vertically up the trunk, judged by an NAS panel [2006?] to be unacceptable for temperature reconstructions, and shown by Ababneh’s [2006] updated bristlecone data to contradict/diverge from Mann’s selected Greybill stripbark data, which Greybill also knew diverged from non-stripbark ring data, as to whatever the bristlecone ring proxy is intended to track [Greybill thought it was CO2 levels] - which “mine” for hockeysticks in “red noise”, regardless [McIntyre and McKitrick 2005], and which were not developed by any bona fide statistician, only by Mann himself, or reviewed/audited in any significant way whatsoever until McIntyre and McKitrick [2005]; and most lately by McShane [2010], the latter which showed that Mann’s methods did not even lead to any significant correlation of Mann’s data and methods in Mann’s/our own modern instrumental calibration period; apart from those problems, unless you get really lucky and have a very long “calibration period”, it is manifestly absurd that localized wild bristlecone and foxtail pine tree rings mainly at Sheep Mountain in the Sierras should track a Global Mean Temperature, of all things, which they indeed did not, again as then demonstrated by the divergence of Mann’s tree ring data and methods either within the calibration period or the previous geological period “reconstructed”, and displayed by McIntyre on his “not to be mentioned” blog, Climate Audit, under his category, ”bristlecones”, in his discussion of Ababneh [2006]!  That is, Ababneh’s data reveals a divergence either before or after the modern period defining Mann’s bristlecone dependent Hockeystick “temperature” reconstruction, again alleging to erase the MWP and show the current warm period as “unprecedented”, whereas Mann’s bristlecones simply don’t line up with Ababneh’s updated data! 
 
But did you know that McIntyre is/was an official ipcc Reviewer? And that he recommended to the ipcc that the “divergence problem” importantly involving Briffa’s Yamal/Northeast Siberia data and methods be explicitily revealed in the ipcc’s 4AR at the time, and adequately explained; and not instead so infamously ”hidden” in iconic ipcc and WMO graphs, as the divergence in fact was - and as also specifically admitted in the “Mann’s Nature trick” and ”hide the decline” Climategate emails?  
 
Then the known divergence of Briffa’s Yamal larch/northeast Siberia temperature reconstruction – another Hockeystick based upon tree rings – was rather stunningly further abetted by the release of Briffa’s previously unrevealed [Science mag. 2000 and 2006] Yamal data, once his “materials and methods” were finally published by the “Phil Trans. B” in 2009, whereupon it was also revealed that Briffa’s own updated “treemometers”, statistically alleging to contain the modern “blade” of the hockeystick and the “shaft” projecting flat Global Mean “Temperatures” backwards toward the Medieval Warm Period, were resolved to essentially depend upon only one tree, YAD06 for the “blade” !
 
In the case of Mann’s and Briffa’s work, whose adequately discredited Hockeysticks are so critical to Climate Science’s CO2 = CAGW “proof” that they simply won’t let them go, how much more evidence of ”wrong”, anti-science ”methods” and results and  do you need in order to question the whole of Climate Science’s “methods”?  But, for example, did you know that the hypotheses involving CO2 = CAGW “Climate Science” have not yet yielded even one correct, empirically confirmed prediction uniquely involving the GCM “physics”, or needed to explain any modern era weather or climate feature? [Now, apparently Climate Science is even trying to call dramatic weather events "climate" = "Anthropogenic Climate Disruption"!]  

Disclosure, for the record: I have no background in climate science that qualifies me to question the findings of that scientific field.

JonasN,
Your implication that I am a “denier” because I apparently don’t believe that the MWP or LIA weren’t there is made up BS. You will never find any statement I made which even implies this. Those eras are clearly identifiable  on proxy graphs of global and NH temperatures which also show a hockey stick blade in the modern era. The point of these graphs is that the blade shows a more rapid increase and higher temperature than the MWP.

I won’t reply to the unsupported ad hominem statements that you made about me. It is clear that you are unable to rebut the scientific arguments I have made in rebuttal to your unsound claims for example – feedback of 3.5X are assumed by climate scientists, and unlikely to be present based on common sense. 

One more point regarding the Hockeystick:

The blade, esp. the tip, is not part of the reconstruction, it constitues the grafted-on instrumental record. The reconstruction showed something else: essentially that the proxies weren’t for temperature (only). Hence ‘hide the decline’ …

EricAdler 4 hours ago in reply to trashman Trashman,
It seems that you have been absorbing soundbites for AGW denier sites, and are not familiar with the rebuttals.
Yes, Eric, in reply to your comment below, I am indeed repeating/referring to work from McIntyre’s open-audit “denier” website, while you are likewise repeating work from the “believers”, at least according to the implications of your own word use.

Therefore, the proof instead lies in the making of the pudding, and truly interested people should directly observe “the making” by anyone doing it. Note also that McIntyre “takes no position” on the overall validity of CO2 = CAGW itself. He is concerned with “auditing” the data and methods, that is, some important aspects of the “science”, which constitute some of the most important Climate Science pudding, here involving the making of “hockeysticks”.

‘Briefly’, McIntyre alleges to show that Briffa’s online response does not refute McIntyre’s previous critique of Briffa’s specific use of the/his methods and data – once finally definitively revealed in Phil Trans B [2008] – as employed in Briffa’s previous analyses, and as referred to and used in support of Climate Sciences’ CO2 = CAGW “hockeysticks” in the ipcc’s AR4.

 
Briffa’s online response only “moves on” to yet another attempt to find a hockeystick, a chronic hockeystick “team” tactic which also highlights Climate Science’s ongoing, and by now rather apparent desperate need for hockeysticks. ["hockey team" = Mann's, enc., own self-assigned designation.]

Briffa’s 2009 online, non-”published”, non- “peer reviewed” response also accepts my critique of Climate Science’s unscientific definition of “peer review”: that a study published after a review by a few selected peers ensures the “given truth” of the conclusions from that study, when according to the practice of real scientific method and principle science, it does not and never has!

 
McIntyre also avers, in the fist link below, that Briffa’s “online article is a big improvement over the previous [published and "peer reviewed"] literature and thus full credit to Briffa and associates for using online publication to improve the standard of presentation of the Yamal chronology from their previous defective presentations in academic journals.”

　
Thus, as to the “making of the pudding”, a week before his more substantive review of Briffa’s online response [2009], McIntyre highlights the first point above concerning the relevance of Briffa’s online response, and also notes, after explaining it more fully, Briffa’s non-endorsement of the realclimate attacks upon McIntyre’s analyses of Briffa’s previous work to which you also refer.

　
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/04/response-to-briffa-2/

　
For now, I’ll re-iterate the points at the start of this post: that the Briffa response accepts the legitimacy of the issues raised about Yamal at CA and that it does not endorse any of the attacks (or defences) advocated by Gavin Schmidt and realclimate supporters. Both constructive in different ways.

————

Then a week later McIntyre has found that the failure of Briffa’s method to test for population inhomogeneity in any way whasoever, invalidates Briffa’s newer online hockeystick – essentially by allowing for the selection subpopulations of the available cores which will always produce hockeysticks.

　
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/11/is-yamal-homogeneous-an-esper-style-answer/

　
Application of the Esper-style test [by McIntyre] demonstrates Briffa’s failure to carry out any test for population inhomogeneity and demonstrates the futility of the analysis in Briffa’s online post. It also supports the surmise made in my original post – that there was a serious issue with the population inhomogeneity of both the CRU12, now seen to extend into the expanded POR-YAD 22.

　
Eric, without going on to McIntyre’s analysis of Mann’s own hockeystick and its recurring iterations, including Mann’s most obviously inappropriate use of Tiljander’s proxy data “upside down” and including the Tiljander-asserted contaminated “modern” data, it, too, will be found to be similarly non-”robust” according to real scientific method and principle science.

That is, if one does in fact check out the actual “making of the hockeystick puddings.”

Trashman cries “victory!” as he scuttles back into the shadows. Congratulations on winning the race to the bottom at the Chronicle of “Higher” Education.

Your so-called arguments here are unsubstantiated juvenilia and sadly you match Peter Wood in your determined blindness to logic and factual criticism.