Comments on: Esper et al. [2002]: Quebec

By: TCO

TCO — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:05:29 +0000

To me, it’s not even an issue of the auditability of the meta-analyses but just a simple concept that a big part of the value of the work depends on selection and even that adroit selection or weighting or whatever should be explained as it is a lot of the work and is something that others may want to emulate. This is very different from asking fo skcode or data or whatever. this is a big picture concept that peer reviewers and editors should ask for. REally surprised that more detail on subordinate study selection is not included. What is the standard for that sort of thing in sociology?

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 04:57:53 +0000

Not looking closely, I misread your comment as saying “subsidies” to Quebec – this is a Canadianism. Quebec is not in MBH. None of these studies say how they choose their proxies – this is a big issue in evidence-based medicine. I asked Nature to require a statement of how the proxies were chosen, but they didn’t bother. NOAA has Mann et al [2000] on their website, saying that they used “clear a priori” criteria to select their proxies. Why don’t you write them and ask what the criteria are? Seriously.

By: TCO

TCO — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 04:44:13 +0000

Is the Quebec study part of MBH? Surely a very important part of the MBH work is related to what substudies to include and this effort was detailed in depth in the paper?