A Tale of Two Reports - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 120

would be affected if I had never been conceived by my parents. My parents report having been
amused. 48 And I'm fairly certain that this was the first congressional hearing at which a representative
uttered the phrase “regularized expectation-maximization.” You could just hear statistics junkies
everywhere doing their best Beavis and Butthead impressions: “Did he just say regularized
expectation-maximization? Heh, heh, heh.”
Shortly after the first hearing, Stanford physics professor David Ritson, who had previously
published on proxy-based climate reconstructions, 49 identified some serious problems with the
Wegman Report. In an e-mail sent days after the first hearing to Wegman and coauthors, and copied to
NAS panel chair Gerald North and me, Ritson expressed concern that Wegman et al. appeared
curiously to have repeated precisely the same error that underlay McIntyre and McKitrick's original
claim 50 that the hockey stick was a statistical artifact. Ritson forwarded the message twice over the
next two weeks, without any response from Wegman or his two coauthors. 51 A member of Waxman's
staff contacted Wegman to ask why he had not responded to Ritson's inquiries. Wegman claimed 52 that
he had never received the e-mail 53 and that he was under no obligation to reveal details about his
calculations or methods anyway. 54 He was simply too busy now to respond to Ritson, he said, but
would eventually set up a Web site where the materials would be available. He also asserted that his
code fell under the category of “classified research” and thus might be protected by the U.S. Navy.
The irony of Wegman's stonewalling was not lost on Waxman. 55 More than a year later, Wegman had
refused to respond to any of Ritson's subsequent inquiries and had failed to deliver on any of what he
had promised. 56 In Ritson's words, “This is a sad commentary on people who have so strongly and
publicly attacked others for supposed failures to provide such information, and their report must
accordingly be judged in this context.” 57
In the end, the conventional wisdom was that Barton and gang fared poorly in the two days of
hearings that summer. Nonetheless, these were stressful times for me. In the past year, I had spent
much of my time responding to baseless allegations, preparing for hostile questioning, and fending off
one attack after the next, all over alleged misdeeds I had not committed. I was, however, buoyed by
the outpouring of support I received. The previous summer, when I'd just received Barton's
threatening letter and was still in transition between jobs, I received a very welcoming note from the
president of Penn State University, Graham Spanier, reassuring me that he and Penn State were firmly
behind me. There was support from members of the scientific community, colleagues, administrators,
friends, family, and indeed citizens I had never met. I received scores of letters and e-mails that year
from friends I hadn't heard from in years, and from total strangers who just wanted to thank me for
standing my ground.
In March 2006 I was invited to give the Margolin Lecture at Middlebury College to a standing-
room-only crowd. The timing of the lecture couldn't have been better. The Middlebury College
hockey team had just won its division in the NCAA tournament. As my host introduced me, he gave
me a special memento: a Middlebury hockey stick signed by each member of the tournament-winning
team. The Middle-bury hockey stick is still proudly displayed in my office. I sometimes joke to
visitors that I keep it there for defense.
I also had the opportunity to meet Sherwood Boehlert in person just after the July 27
congressional hearing. Having announced his retirement from the House earlier that year, he was
being honored for his long-standing support for the Baseball Hall of Fame, located within his district
in upstate New York. He graciously took several minutes out of this scheduled event to talk with me.