Earlier this year Christopher Monckton, Willie W. H. Soon, David R. Legates and William M. Briggs wrote a report titled, "Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model." Rather than addressing the report's main argument, which is that models for global warming are really bad predictors, so the models assumptions need to be questioned, critics attacked the authors, specifically Willie Soon. Soon couldn't be trusted because he was in the pocket of big oil (so it was claimed), therefore the report could be dismissed without even addressing the central fact that climate models run too hot so their assumptions are necessarily wrong.
Let's see if the same thing happens with Deflating ‘Deflategate’which claims
Our study, written with our colleague Joseph Sullivan, examines the evidence and methodology of the Wells report and concludes that it is deeply flawed. (We have no financial stake in the outcome of Deflategate.)But here's the problem. The authors of Deflating Deflategate are the director or economic studies and a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. Since AEI is "is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise," surely their opinions and studies can be ignored, dismissed, derided and discarded as paid advertising of the Koch Brothers and Wall Street.
The Wells report’s main finding is that the Patriots balls declined in pressure more than the Colts balls did in the first half of their game, and that the decline is highly statistically significant. For the sake of argument, let’s grant this finding for now. Even still, it alone does not prove misconduct. There are, after all, two possibilities. The first is that the Patriots balls declined too much. The second — overlooked by the Wells report — is that the Colts balls declined too little.
Too bad for Tom Brady and the Patriots that the wrong people had the right opinion.
Bill
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