Talk:Edward Wegman

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This article was nominated for deletion on 24/7/2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

[edit] Why he was asked to do the double checking of the statistics

Hi John. The transcript of the hearing has Whitfield saying he and Barton asked Wegman to do this but they don't really say why him, well not directly. It seems obvious to me because he was the chairman of an NAS committee (but perhaps it's because of his reputation and CV or that he did it for free or they like George Mason University or they picked him out of a hat.) (Just like I imagine Dr North was chosen because of his involvement in the NRC.) But maybe they're just two guys that said yes and are qualified.

I have it written too strongly, I don't know why they asked him. I'll see what I can fix. I just wanted to put in something about why. Maybe just because he's qualified. I don't remember any involvement with AGW by him before this, so maybe they were trying to be as unbiased as possible. (And he is part of the NAS after all, so he's part of the mainstream.)

Last summer, Chairman Barton and I inquired into this matter after we learned that the lead author of these federally funded studies - Dr. Michael Mann -- to share the computer code he used to generate his results with researchers who sought to replicate the result of Mann's studies. The researchers, one of whom will testify today, reportedly could not replicate his work based on what the study said. The researchers nevertheless identified several methodological and data problems with the work. How critical were these problems identified by these researchers? Were the problems undetected because Dr. Mann assessed his own work in an IPCC report? These are serious questions, and the answers contain broad implications for global policy on climate change. We should ensure that science is providing us with reliable, balanced, well-considered, and unbiased answers.

Now, when Chairman Barton and I wrote a letter asking that the Mann report be reviewed by some statisticians... ...And so what we did was, we asked that Dr. Wegman and a team that he had review these data. Dr. Wegman is Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and at the committee's request he assembled this ad hoc committee of statisticians to examine the hockey stick studies and related articles and his committee report prepared for Chairman Barton and me and the committee and publicly released this Friday provides important findings for Congress and the public to consider about the soundness and openness of climate change research and assessment and I can tell you right now that his document has been peer reviewed also, and we will get into that later.

In addition to Dr. Wegman, we have Dr. Gerald North of Texas A&M University, who will testify on the first panel about the current state of historical temperature understanding. Dr. North chaired a recent National Research Council panel on historical temperature reconstructions and we look forward to hearing his perspective for improving climate change assessments.

Sln3412 23:09, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and edited it out. Sln3412 23:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It's a fine distinction, but being asked because he is notable (as evidenced by being Chair of a panel) isn't the same as being asked in his capacity as Chair.JQ 00:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wegman report, peer review

The most recent edit (by User:Gmb92) removed a long superfluous list of reviewers, but substituted the slightly misleading statement: "At the hearing, Dr. Wegman indicated that the report had only been peer-reviewed by those he selected." My recollection is, his ad-hoc committee selected the reviewers, but I've misplaced the ref, darn it.

For that matter, the quotes from his report aren't the best, imo. For one, we need his concluding "equation" (from memory) Method wrong + Results right = Bad Science

Anyway, this is a memory-prod to return here when time permits... Pete Tillman (talk) 08:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)