Homeopathy: It Goes With Everything (But Coke)

"In 2001 the IPCC published its Third Assessment report prominently featuring a graph that became 'the logo of global warming'. Previous historical reconstructions didn't show our modern warm climate as particularly anomalous. This was very different, and was hailed as a 'call to action'. Yet Michael Mann's studies were deeply flawed. Omit one or two proxies, for example, and the scary warming 'spike' disappears. Mann's model could produce hockey stick shapes using random data, such as baseball scores, or red noise. Critics alleged that Mann's choices of data and statistical tools all cooled the Medieval Warm Period, and emphasised late 20th Century warming.

A new book recounts how the 'Hockey Stick' model was created and more intriguingly, the political and institutional defence of the indefensible. (At one stage the Hockey Stick's defenders argued that trees on different continents had 'teleconnections' with each other - a claim that wouldn't be out of place in a homeopathy brochure.)"

-- The Register