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Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
I don't think you read it correctly. I posted it because I thought it was a fair look at the entire debate. You can only see the refutation of "a less-than-fully scientific, sensational article that made dubious claims," while ignoring stuff like this:
"Sharp’s version of this study found a huge effect of 88 percent. But after others fixed his data, some of the same players still showed an improvement when playing for New England, of 23 percent."
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Again, I'm not in the details on this, but the stuff that Burger linked to provide plenty of reasons to think that the Patriots would fumble less than other teams for good reasons (e.g., holding a big lead). Did Sharp control for that, too? That's a rhetorical question, and we don't need to get to that level of detail. Here is what that author says:
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I had nothing at all to do with Slate’s choice to go with Sharp’s analysis. But at the risk of sounding like a shameless home-team fan—or worse, a shameless Jets fan—I think it was the right decision. The analysis may not have been Good Science, in the sense of having come through careful vetting, ahead of time, by experts in the field. In retrospect we know that Sharp’s approach was somewhat slapdash, and his conclusions overblown. But it also seems as if he turned up some suggestive data. His approach was interesting—clever, even—and it led to further work.
If Sharp had behaved more like a scientist—and if Slate had acted more like a scientific journal—then his analysis would not have made it into print. There would have been no fierce debates on methodology in the comments of his post, no more hypotheses to help explain the data. Fellow geeks would not have checked his numbers and corrected his results. They would not have given us the last few days’ entertaining and enlightening dispute. We would not have a better, deeper understanding of the stats.
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Call me crazy, but Hank doesn't seem to have a better, deeper understanding of the stats. He seems to think that the Patriots never fumbled and that this proves they cheated for years.
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Right. You know, it's funny. I say that it probably shouldn't be more than a 2 game suspension. I agree that Goodell is mostly posturing. But when it comes to you, it's clear that with any issue when it comes to the Patriots, you're not really trying.
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Well, we agree on the NFL, I guess.
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"The report said all 11 of the Patriots' game balls, when re-tested at halftime, were below the minimum level specified by NFL rules of 12.5 psi. The four Colts game balls that were re-tested were between 12.5 and 13.5 psi, so they were within the rules."
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My point was that most of the Patriots balls were not significantly below 12.5 psi. According to Wikipedia, which has cites I didn't check, "At halftime, league officials inspected the footballs. It was initially reported that eleven of the twelve balls used by the Patriots were measured to be two pounds per square inch below the minimum, but later reports refuted this allegation, citing only a single ball two pounds per square inch below the minimum."
If the latter is true, then I question whether the Pats got any competitive advantage.
Note also that the Colts had one of those balls (and for significantly more than 100 seconds). From what I know, it's possible that the Patriots staffer took the balls into the bathroom and deflated them, one more than the rest. It's also possible that they deflated (or inflated?) the balls to the bare minimum before the game, consistent with Brady's preferences and the rules, and that the Colts deflated one of them after intercepting it, and that the other balls tested a little below the minimum at half time because a different gauge was used. Like I said before, I have hardly read everything on this, so you tell me -- what evidence is there that the former happened instead of the latter? I find it very easy to believe that someone was cheating, but I also see a lot of people arguing that the Patriots are cheaters and therefore they were cheating.
eta: My main point is "If the latter is true," not the last paragraph.
