[ModelBreaker]

A few problems with your charitable naivete: 1. The proponents of the hockey stick still publsh it, cite it, promote it, defend it, and attack as holocaust deniers anyone who questions it. 2. It was a formula not a “bug” or logic flow that is the issue here, and it’s a work of considerable statistical expertise. Saying that it’s an accident is like saying you’ve accidentally assembled a nuclear reactor.

You have obviously looked at this more closely than have I. I know the problem was with calculating principal components. That is a well known algorithm; so I assumed the problem was a bug in the author's implementation. Did they change the PCA algorithm and, if so, what was their justification--was it ever peer reviewed and published or did they keep it secret?

[dangus]

>> You have obviously looked at this more closely than have I. I know the problem was with calculating principal components. That is a well known algorithm; so I assumed the problem was a bug in the author’s implementation. Did they change the PCA algorithm and, if so, what was their justification—was it ever peer reviewed and published or did they keep it secret? <<

I’d have to go back and check, and I forgot where I read broken down. But again, it’s not the algorithm, it’s the formula. It was obviously made public, since other researchers were able to plug other data into the program.

As for peer review, that means crap nowadays. Have you ever read the Lancet lately?