date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:59:09 -0400 from: drdendro@ldgo.columbia.edu (Edward R. Cook) subject: Re: Your paper to: Keith Briffa Hi Keith, I just got the paper from Nature to review concerning Bayesian methods of calibrating tree rings. Its title is "Implications of regression errors in proxy palaeoclimatic reconstructions" by Robertson et al. I think you know them because the tree-ring data they use for example is the dC13 data from oak. It is hard to see exactly what they are doing because the paper is a comment to Nature about 2 pages long. So, there is little description of the method. Their Bayesian method appears to do somewhat better then classical regression (just bi-variate between temperature and dC13), but not startling so (unlike their use of words like "substantially"). Also, they don't show any verification results. So, I am going to recommend that it be rejected and also recommend that a more lengthy paper on it be submitted as a forum article to The Holocene. What they claim is provocative enough to warrant it and they will have more room to describe the method. Cheers, Ed