In Hockey speak, the term “indepenent”, as defined by their usage of the term, is simply someone other than the authors of a paper. I had always thought that in science “independent” meant a disinterested third party. I guess that I am wrong.

My training in mathematics and statistics is obviously adequate for what I’m doing and both are relevant disciplines. I’d even submit that something as simple as accounting is relevant to multiproxy studies – as many problems in MBH are more like sharp accounting – and experience in busienss accounting is highly relevant to the study. This is something that many people don’t understand.

As to RE and R2, if you read Barton carefully, they are dealing entirely with disclosure matters – this can be dealt with independently of the statistics – and are within the range of lawyers. Their questions are very measured and have been misunderstood and mischaracterized.

I don’t understand the climate science hysteria at all. At some point, they have to convince people like Barton and, in their shoes, I’d welcome any oportunity to have an audience with adversaries rather than contenting myself with warm fuzzies from the like minded.

That’s quite a funny reply (I mean, the Mann letter). I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t disclose the source code, especially in view of the controversy. I understand the Intellectual Property argument, but can this kind of software have any sort of commercial value? If not, what does he lose by making it public? On the other hand, refusing to release it just makes the whole thing look even more suspicious. I’ve written many pieces of software in my scientific carreer, and I can’t think of one that I would not have made public if someone had asked (nobody ever asked…well, I’m a lousy programmer).

I also don’t like his personal attacks. This is not a way to defend science. To counter your arguments by saying that you have no training in climatology is absurd, because this is all about statistics. The call to the “overwhelming consensus” is also a very weak argument, as always. And finally, you’re absolutely right that former graduate students are not “independent”, especially if they have co-authored papers in the recent past.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t really understand the debate yet, not knowing enough about RE and R2 in this context to judge who is right and who is wrong, and I doubt rep. Barton can understand that either. A really fair and independent assessement would compare the results from both methods, and objectively analyze the pros and cons (I’m sure this is not a black and white issue). I don’t see why this causes such a fuss.

I think you might want to clarify what you think Mann meant when he said “independent,” and contrast that with what you assume the term to mean. I expect you will find some differences there. From my view, I see two different definitions.