[Mr. K]

you nailed it- they created a model to fit the data, then showed the output and said "see?"

It is the same thing you did with your spreadsheet- you knew what outcome you wanted and so made a modle that gave you that output for your starting input.

I laff my ass off when I hear on TV someone say "thats what the computer model says"

The closest thing to an exception is weather modeling which is rarely able to predict anything past a few days- and I can do that myself looking at the prevailing wind patterns

[PatrickHenry]

you nailed it- they created a model to fit the data, then showed the output and said "see?" It is the same thing you did with your spreadsheet- you knew what outcome you wanted and so made a modle that gave you that output for your starting input.

I still haven't communicated my point. It's not that they got the desired output. That was already known. This isn't a case of some idiologically-motivated programmer saying: "Look, my model predicts global warming. Head for the hills!" I agree with you, anyone can do that. Even I could do that. What's remarkable in this case is that they fashioned a model. The model is the "theory," built around all the known data points, which attempts to show how the output was achieved.