mike,
“The separate curves for the proxy reconstruction and instrumental temperature data were clearly labeled, and the data for both curves were available in the public domain at the time of publication for anyone who wanted to download them.”
But RECONSTRUCTED (50 YEAR LOWPASS) seamlessly merges proxy and instrumental? Or not?

..we supplemented our plot of reconstructed temperatures in MBH98 by additionally showing the instrumental temperatures, which extended through the 1990s. That allowed our reconstruction of past temperatures to be viewed in the context of the most recent warming. The separate curves for the proxy reconstruction and instrumental temperature data were clearly labeled, and the data for both curves were available in the public domain at the time of publication for anyone who wanted to download them.

That, in short, was the “trick” that Jones had chosen to use to bring the proxy temperature series in his comparison up to the present, even though the proxy data themselves ended several decades earlier. There was one thing Jones did in his WMO graph, however, that went beyond what we had done in our Nature article: He had seamlessly merged proxy and instrumental data into a single curve, without explaining which was which. That was potentially misleading, though not intentionally so; he was only seeking to simplify the picture for the largely nontechnical audience of the WMO report.