"Question No. 2. Dr. Wegman states that paleoclimatologists do not interact with statisticians. Do you have any response to that statement? What steps, if any, is the paleoclimatology field taking to ensure that it is using appropriate statistical methodologies?
Answer:
Unfortunately, Dr. Wegman made this claim without engaging in any effort to ascertain the extent to which climate scientists interact with statisticians. To the contrary, Dr. Wegman simply assumed --- without data, indeed, without any basis at all --- that climate scientists, and paleoclimatologists in particular, do not interact with statisticians.
Dr. Wegman’s accusation could not be further from the truth. The participation of statisticians in climate science has become so routine that there is an entire field of climate research known as “statistical climatology,” which involves the collaboration of large numbers of statisticians and climate scientists. There are even textbooks dedicated
to the study of statistical climatology. In his testimony before the Committee, Dr. Hans Von Storch found it necessary to inform Dr. Wegman of this fact. And Dr. Von Storch should know; he and Dr. Francis Zwiers (a Ph.D. statistician specializing in climate applications) have written one widely used textbook on statistics and its applications to
climate studies. Another statistician, Professor Dan Wilks of Cornell University, has written an additional textbook on statistics and its applications to the atmospheric sciences."