re: #115 SixDegrees

I’m not arguing, either for or against, any particular circumstance. Just pointing out that data filtering is common, and is also not always as straightforward as tossing out the outliers.

Even when tossing outliers, statistical analysis is required to determine what, exactly, constitutes an outliers, and why.

Absolutely — data filtering and adjusting is very common, and there are always good reasons for it. On those rare occasions in which scientists have dishonestly cooked their data, they’ve been discovered and discredited — by other scientists. There’s a very strong incentive NOT to cook data, because it will ruin your career.

Which is why the people screaming about “altered data” in the CRU case are so completely off base.