That ones been around the block more than a few times.

re #30

My take is basically that publishing does not assure that one has clear logic, it makes it much more likely…v

Not that there is a major concern here but in that case could you gives us a clear indication of your publication bibliography? Why would it not surprise me if it turns out you published 30 articles on nearly same topic.

Pick 4 high beta stocks: A, B, C, D. Take a list of 64,000 names from a dial for dollars mailing list, divide into 4 groups of 4,000. Mail out letters to each group: Hi, I’m Steve M., the stock genius. I want you to try my paid newsletter for “stock locks”. Just to show you that I can pick them, I’ll tell you free that stock A, (B, C, D) is a lock to go up 20% in the next month.

Now, throw away the names of any stocks that did not lock and rock. Let’s assume one stock (B) worked. Keep the B names, chuck the others. Pick a new group of stocks: E, F, G, H. Divide the B list of 16,000 into 4 groups. Rinse, lather, repeat.

When you’ve done it 3 times, you’ll have 1,000 people ready to have your babies if you’ll just keep sending them picks. Sign them up for the newsletter at $395.00/year. Publish some blather. Let them churn their accounts with their brokers.

Repeat with another list of 64,000 names. It’s a big country…

Actually, one of our objections to NAS about the composition of the panel was that there was no one on the panel that had this viewpoint (NAS panels are supposed to cover a broad viewpoint.) While there’s much to content oneself in NAS findings, I feel that a more representative and even more independent panel might have gone a little further, but, hey, one step at a time.Also, Ken, you didn’t mention it, but the Lassen study that you linked to, used the Groveman and Landsberg series mentioned here.

Holy moly, TCO, none of this philosophical discussion on references helped me one bit to make my links. The first one worked (and if I can remember, I will have learned the proper procedure), but there are 2 links in paragraph 4 one starting after P. Thejll and the other after W. Soon.

John replies: I have fixed the links.

I was at that time able to find the 1991 study published in Science by E. Friss-Christian and K. Lassen that closely correlated the variation the length of sun spot cycles with temperature for both 130 years of instrumentally recorded temperatures up to 1989 and back to 1550 using very incomplete temperature proxies. In later papers I believe seeing a critique of the completeness of their instrumental temperature records. I believe the sun spot data was passed through a low-pass filter and some “optimizing” of fit was accomplished by it.

Variation in sun spot number had been correlated previously with temperature but suffered from evidence that it lacked reasonable cause and effect relationship. The sun spot cycle length variation and temperature correlation was criticized for lack of convincing physical evidence.

Finally, one of the original authors, Lassen, and a new colleague, P. Thejll, reported in 2000 that the fit of sun spot cycle length and temperature was diverging dramatically after 1980 and explained the divergence as a potential case for an AGW signal now being seen above that from the sun spot cycle length variation. W. Soon criticized the authors for basing their claims on predictions of future cycle lengths now and for the original hypothesis lacking in physical explanation. Soon did not reject the influence of the sun on the recent time temperature increases, but simply pointed to the potential statistical problems with this study and its predecessors.

To my mind, this study appears very analogous to an investment strategy that has been derived from data mining and the over fit nature of the in-sample results becoming apparent only after sufficient years of seeing out-of-sample results. The close correlation claimed in the study made the “divergence” more apparent. The claims and methods for the HS certainly show much evidence of data mining, but since in their case the in-sample results show little or no correlation, out-of-sample results will be of little evaluative worth.

The concept that you have of citing papers as authorities to bolster weak work is a strange one.

Even though I may periodically require a good lecture I think you are wasting space doing it here. I agree in essence with your comments on references. I certainly did not even imply that anyone should cite papers to bolster weak work. Here is what I mean: The process of publishing a paper is in a way an appeal to authority in that if one thinks they have something important to say to a wide audience the alternative of publishing requires submitting to an authorized source where the appeal to the authority of that publication gets you that audience –it does not mean you even have an enduring respect for that organization.

A paper reference assumes firstly an appeal to authority as in “leading authorities” in such and such a technical area or at least someone who has been authorized to publish. The worth of that reference to an individidual reader is than finally determined by the content of that reference and that individual’s evaluation of it (not by an off hand comment by a TCO). In this specific case I think some of us see the multiple personalities of NAS (and perhaps the reasons for them having that condition) and we judge that we are fully capable of determining which is operating (in agreement in this case with Steve M).

Let me say how I look at references and blather on a bit since this is actually something that I care about. At least there will be some new content, not just refrains to get Steve to do something.

When I read a paper, I look at references. If it’s an interesting paper, I’ll go and get all the references. (copying is cheap, time is precious.) Then while trying to read the paper very thoroughly, I can look at the references and better understand what the paper is trying to say. (science papers can be very clipped, can be a bit pretentious, etc.) In addition, I get a feel for the broader context. When I write a paper, I try to do the same thing and give the reader those references that would help him. Some are basic “mini-lit review” items from the introduction. Some are references to comparable work that is specifically mentioned in the given article, but where there is not sufficient room to recap. (For example, we found a correlation of .8 to precip in lollypop trees, this compares to a .6 correlation by Fritts in 1960.) And in some cases, there is some detail of method which for brevity, it is not desired to repeat. For instance, we preserved the specimen using the method of Douglass (citation).

Things that annoy me in citations:
(1) Any clerical inaccuracy. I knew an on-the-cusp-of-Nobel scientist who would go to the library and handcheck all the references in papers written by his gradstudents. When you write a paper, you are contributing to the archived liuterature. People will look at and use your paper 40 years from now. Don’t screw up the citation. (This is why it irks me when Steve makes references to imprecise citations like VS04 or the like).
(2) A bogus citation. Something where a description of method was needed, but author could not find it, and could not be bothered to recap it himself. So he puts something that looks like a ref to a procedure, but when you track it down, it’s not. I knew a research group that did this with about 10 of their papers. Someone got lazy on the first one and then the just kept pushing it forward. I found it and that stopped being repeated.
(3) Overly pushing your own work or slighting competitors. Pretty obvious that you should not do this sort of thing. That said, I do think there is a good point to referencing most of your own similar papers done in an area of research. Not for patting yourself on the back, but so that future readers can pull all the relevant papers and follow the general thread of work.
(4) Lazy citations. This is a weaker form of error 2, but think of the heartbeat paper in the paper that I criticized (my thread). They wanted a general paper on autocorrelation of time series. Instead of picking a textbook or some classical paper (mandlebrot, Nile, classical econ paper, etc.), they went with a single, not so important paper on heartbeats. I BET this was a lazy grad student, just checking a box, not thinking about things from the persepctive of a future reader.

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The concept that you have of citing papers as authorities to bolster weak work is a strange one. I am actually not that familiar with it. I take more of a nescessary, but not sufficient regard towards the literature. I’ve read plenty of papers and know that they vary in quality. I don’t like (nor am I used to in the physical sciences) someone buttressing a weak argument by reference to a paper as an authority. I like (and usually see) them reference other papers as sources of information (well documented) and as part of an integrated argument or inference. Just as someone would refer to a link on the net for more information as part of an argument, but not as obviating the need to tie everything together logically.