cc: Gabi Hegerl , tom crowley , mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu, "raymond s.bradley" , Keith Briffa , Jonathan Overpeck , Stefan Rahmstorf , Steve Schneider , peter.stott@metoffice.com, Gavin Schmidt , mann@multiproxy.evsc.virginia.edu date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 13:05:07 -0500 from: "Michael E. Mann" subject: some info you'll want to have... to: stocker@climate.unibe.ch, joos@climate.unibe.ch, knutti@climate.unibe.ch Dear Thomas, Fortunat, Reto: You might have wanted to check w/ us first, but thanks anyway for responding to this. We've uncovered the error in what they did. They didn't use the proxy data available on our public ftp site, which I had pointed them too--instead they used a spreadsheet file that my associate Scott Rutherford had prepared. In this file, most of the early series were overprinted at later years. This resulted in the reconstruction becoming increasingly spurious as one goes further back in time--the estimates prior to 1700 or so were rendered meaningless. There were also some other methodological errors that will be detailed shortly, but this was the big one. So they will probably have to retract the paper. You can find out more about this here, on journalist David Appell's "blog": [1]http://www.davidappell.com/ We also have an op-ed piece going out this afternoon, further detailing the problems. Will send that as soon as its available. I've attached a few other relevant documents, and I'm forwarding another email I sent out to colleagues yesterday, just after I had discovered the main problem in what they've done... mike ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Journalists.re.EandEfin-revised.doc"