"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 09:50:07 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:


"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .

.. Lest you forget, you made this claim about her paper:
"data that didn't agree with the findings was discarded"
That's a pretty serious accusation.

I am sure not alone in my claims about Ms.Ingham.

I am only quoting the paper that says outliers were discarded without
listing them or specifying them number. snip hurricane of handwaving

Gordon, you said that "data that didn't agree with the findings was
discarded". This is a serious allegation against the authors of the
paper. What basis do you have for making it?

Every paper that I have been associated with or read in my field that
discarded outliers either plotted the data and marked the discards or
provided a place you could get the data and judge for yourself the relevance
of discarded data. Since the data on this paper was plotted in the paper the
marked discarded data must have been very inconvenient indeed. The bins the
data were broken into had no marked grouping it was all one almost uniform
spread of data that they found a confidence level of 99% form 90 trials in.

The statisticians I gave the paper to laughed. One of them was an engineer
and not aware of the food fight going on at the time. I did not tell them
anything about the factors surrounding the paper I just questioned the high
confide level from less than 100 trials. Every one mentioned the discarded
data as well.

Discarding outliers is not bad practice. Discarding them with out
documentation is. If they don't tell what they discarded they could have
thrown out anything.

The green lobby standing behind this kind of science is the reason that
serious scientist don't take you seriously. Concocted papers, misrepresented
affiliations, faked studies do a great deal more harm to your cause than the
temporary headlines they make. In the US it has put the Forestry back in
the management of local managers, scientist in charge of EPA and the Kyoto
Treaty flushed down the toilet over here. In the USGS and USDA we have well
over 100 years sound movement scientific research. The Royal Academy of
Science of London is the only thing that approaches it for longevity and
they don't fund research near to the degree that the US does. It is much
more difficult to sway US politicians and the public with sensational press.
For one thing some of our positions have been in pubic service longer than
some of the EU government have been in existence. We also have a many more
checks and balances preventing public opinion from hastily changing things
with out time to gather more data on the subject and prevent the tyranny of
the few by the many. unfortunately we are loosing that faster and a faster.

If you want to be taken seriously use good science. Not emotional appeals
and faked studies.

Gordon