There is one part that sticks in my craw, that is, the part about the correction applied for post-1960 tree ring data.
It smacks of corporate / bureaucratic mindset that there was (apparently) so little effort to find out why the tree ring data diverged after 1960.
Wouldn't a scientist be fascinated by the question of why this divergence was occurring-instead of just accepting it happened?
Example: Feynman wondered if he could describe in mathematical terms the way that a spinning plate would wobble. He took it as a challenge to himself as a physicist to determine this, despite it not appearing to have any practical application. These calculations later led to his work on electron spin.
THAT is the level of curiosity I would expect from people at a top flight research institution. Or am I wrong, and there was a lot of research to determine the tree ring divergence?
I beleive that, even as the idealistic "curious scientist", one would have priorities. Perhaps it wasn't interesting enough compared to the myriad of other things one could be working on.
It smacks of corporate / bureaucratic mindset that there was (apparently) so little effort to find out why the tree ring data diverged after 1960.
Wouldn't a scientist be fascinated by the question of why this divergence was occurring-instead of just accepting it happened?
Example: Feynman wondered if he could describe in mathematical terms the way that a spinning plate would wobble. He took it as a challenge to himself as a physicist to determine this, despite it not appearing to have any practical application. These calculations later led to his work on electron spin.
THAT is the level of curiosity I would expect from people at a top flight research institution. Or am I wrong, and there was a lot of research to determine the tree ring divergence?