Did Wells' scientists do empirical tests? -- and why that matters so much

Normally I frown on the type of post I'm going to make here, so please excuse me for feeling compelled in this case. Exponent has one of the country's leading air quality meteorology practices, right here in Massachusetts. I know for a fact (through personal contacts, I don't work there myself) that they didn't involve those folks in their "analysis;" those guys found out about Exponent's involvement in this when we all did. I'm confident in my opinion that they are mortified by the methods employed, including in reference to PFiVA's cogent points regarding rain temperature and the availability of relevant weather data. Damn right they had access to that data.

PatsFanInVa said:

Exponent uses a cheat of unspecified magnitude in assuming rain to be ground-temperature, despite their access to weather data.

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Nicely done....looks like you know your stuff.

Lots of little things like this add up to a lot of small differences in measurements. Another one is the Colts balls, I believe they estimated they were measured 7 minutes into halftime, and using the equations they had they estimated a certain pressure gain being inside for those 7 minutes.

But we also know that the officials ran out of time to measure all 12. What was halftime, 12 minutes, 15? Isn't it more likely that they measured the balls after 10 minutes? 12? There's another few ticks for the Colts balls that would make the gauge Anderson said he used (and that correlated with the psi drop in the Pats balls) more likely.

I feel like a broken record this week, but this 'analysis' and the report itself is gonna be torn to shreds once the appeal process kicks off. And I can't wait.

They found the Pats balls to be out of range by 0.1 or 0.4 depending on the gauge used. Any common sense would tell you that is a reasonable range as there are many variables nearly impossible to exactly calculate for.

If the temperature in the pre game locker room was 2 degrees warmer than they thought, that is 0.1 psi
If the temp on the sideline was cooler by 2 degrees, that is 0.1
If they measured the balls two minutes earlier in the locker room than memory served, that is 0.1 psi
If they measured all 11 balls two minutes more quickly than they recollected, that's about 0.1 psi on average
If the balls remained in the duffle bag, which has a little insulation and they were bunched up, and the refs were taking each out as each was measured, which seems most likely, that's probably more than 0.1 psi
If Arthur Jones drove his shoulder into the ball as he collided with Blount, that could explain a couple of outliers regardless of their simulation.
If HeadSmart Lab's rain simulation was more accurate than Exponent's joke of a simulation, that's 0.5 psi
If the rain coming down was colder than the air, as I remember, that is... I don't know, but maybe a couple psi.

I'm sure I am missing things. The point is, Exponent used a lot of unreliable data and assumed no margin of error or range of reasonableness and stated the balls fell out of range by 0.1 to 0.4 psi, hence most likely cheating. Smh. The gauges weren't even in sync better than that. That amount is negligible and makes no sense for a team to run a such a risky scheme to gain such an irrelevant advantage. Seriously, having a part time employee do what he's been accused of for 0.1 to 0.4 psi? And by the way, he was a thousand miles away for the game in Indy which apparently was the cause for this sting operation. Sigh.

Sounds like Exponent knows how to rig studies by doing just enough to look rigorous to scientifically illiterate lawyers and judges while fudging the details to steer the findings to a desired outcome. That's how they get these big gigs with car and tobacco companies.

Tony Cahncuhd said:

Headsmart Labs did a more thorough empirical test simulating the effect of a cold rain and found that wetness added another 0.75 psi to the pressure loss, for a total reduction of about 1.82 psi on average.

http://www.headsmartlabs.com/

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I've been waiting to see if they would respond to Exponent's analysis.

Tony Cahncuhd said:

Sounds like Exponent knows how to rig studies by doing just enough to look rigorous to scientifically illiterate lawyers and judges while fudging the details to steer the findings to a desired outcome. That's how they get these big gigs with car and tobacco companies.

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Their games here

1) Spritzer and wipe for rain simulation
2) failure to consider time of possession at the end of the half and how many more Patriots balls were in play and wet vs Colts 1 kneel down
3) rather caviler attitude towards the Colts balls being measured last and hence having more time to warm up. They argument all wet balls would be equilibrium in 2 minutes is insane and demonstrably false.
4) I believe they did not use the proper halftime temperature and did not factor in a 44 degree dew point at the half which is important when dealing with evaporation cooling.

juny said:

I've been waiting to see if they would respond to Exponent's analysis.

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Have you asked them?

Dr Pain said:

Their games here

1) Spritzer and wipe for rain simulation
2) failure to consider time of possession at the end of the half and how many more Patriots balls were in play and wet vs Colts 1 kneel down
3) rather caviler attitude towards the Colts balls being measured last and hence having more time to warm up. They argument all wet balls would be equilibrium in 2 minutes is insane and demonstrably false.
4) I believe they did not use the proper halftime temperature and did not factor in a 44 degree dew point at the half which is important when dealing with evaporation cooling.

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Someone here said that evaporative cooling of the wet balls would further delay the return to equilibrium, and might even temporarily reduce the internal temp of the balls.

Tony Cahncuhd said:

Sounds like Exponent knows how to rig studies by doing just enough to look rigorous to scientifically illiterate lawyers and judges while fudging the details to steer the findings to a desired outcome. That's how they get these big gigs with car and tobacco companies.

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Yep. As I read their report two or three times just trying to get straight data, that is precisely the conclusion I reached.

They jumped through incredible hoops to prove that the balls should measure 0.4 psi higher if measured at 4 minutes into halftime instead of 2 minutes, when that kind of precision is just absurd. Sheesh, the two gauges used to measure the balls differed by 0.4 psi.

The reality is that a 0.4 psi difference between "expected" and "actual measured" is so insignificant (in the real world, given all the assumptions and estimates) that any sane person would have to conclude that there was simply no evidence that the balls had been tampered with. The ball that started it all, the intercepted ball, measured 11.45, 11.35 and 11.75 psi on the three times it was measured. All above, or even higher, than the predicted PSI based on the weather conditions, even given Exponent's questionable assumptions.

Another key piece they kind of buried is how much slower a wet ball rises in temperature when brought indoors compared to a dry ball. They played a lot of game with the time scale on their graphs. to minimize the apparent difference -- I think they recognized that their little plant mister every 15 minutes method was laughable.

BTW, their relative humidity numbers were nuts. They used 75% for game conditions, which might have been the weather report number. But, on a field that had been hit with torrential downpours, 100% was probably a better number.

They used 20% for the refs locker room. No way on a 50 degree rainy day was relative humidity that low.

Dr Pain said:

Have you asked them?

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Just shot them an e-mail. Let's see how they respond.

Have not seen this mentioned yet, but wouldn't the fact that the Pats had a 17 1/2 to 12 1/2 minute time of possession advantage in the first half, @ 40% more time with their balls on the field, play into the PSI loss differential also?

Pepitotj said:

Have not seen this mentioned yet, but wouldn't the fact that the Pats had a 17 1/2 to 12 1/2 minute time of possession advantage in the first half, @ 40% more time with their balls on the field, play into the PSI loss differential also?

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Yes, of course. Especially considering that field was soaked and wet balls lose more PSI and recover more slowly.

The Wells Report got the result they wanted.

Marko said:

And I would imagine atmospheric pressure would be a variable as well.

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Don't think so as ball pressure is relative to the atmospheric pressure, whatever that is.

hambone1818 said:

Nicely done....looks like you know your stuff.
...

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Maybe it's part of the point, that I really don't. I'm not a science guy. I just had a half-hour briefing about aviation weather (and nope, I'm not a pilot either,) and used the google for a few minutes... and I had had some previous briefings about the weather info pilots receive from airports, how important/precise it is (compared with our "is it raining? grab the umbrella?" report we get), etc. By the way I'm also surprised they didn't get the weather from various towers, unless someone measured the rain temp. on the field at Gillette.

It was therefore just shocking that there was no analysis of what temperature water you were dealing with. Why you would wipe the ball down with a towel, other than to fix the results, is beyond me. How long until they were wiped off? Did they time average snap-to-dead-ball time? Did they figure out how often a given ball was swapped out? Did they try? Granted you would not be able to nail down which ball is in play, but you'd see how often there was a "new" ball put in play.

Aren't the visiting team's balls "backup balls"? I thought I had read this but it doesn't jibe how we're talking about this... the whole sting starts with a guy intercepting a ball in another game and saying it felt soft. So the value of the Colts' balls is that they hadn't been in play, in that scenario; the Pats' balls had been in play throughout the half. Somebody please check me on this, but in that scenario -- other than for a sting operation -- aren't you keeping your "backup balls" under a bench or a tarp or something?

It's also extremely misleading to trot out a chart of the different balls early in the report, saying "oh ho! The Colts' footballs were in range! The Pats' balls were not!"

Everybody acknowledges that the Pats' target is the low end of the range. The Colts' target was conjectured to be 13.0 based on a couple of balls that were close to that range as measured.

It's all "aha! A guy called himself The Deflator! Aha! Look at the table! It's true! The Pats' balls were WAY less inflated than the Colts'!"

The report is structured to support a conclusion, and very important points are papered over based on the conclusion preferred. Perfect example: The NFL ref must be wrong about which gauge he used, because it did not fit the narrative.

I'm not one of those guys who swore off NFLN... I notice now they're emphasizing that the penalty wasn't for doing anything, it was for not being cooperative enough (and they're lying about that... claiming that McNally wouldn't go back for a "second" interview, when it was the fourth one where he drew the line...)

I don't know how everything shakes out in this next round. If Kraft thinks he has the ammo we're looking at possibly going full-on Al Davis. Brady himself is just going through a league process regarding reducing the 4 games. In all honestly I'm less galled by that than by the draft picks.

The million bucks? It's a sad commentary on how much energy we put into this as fans. That would be ruinous to me, the fan. To Kraft it's a symbolic slap larger than the other symbolic slaps the league passes out. But the specified amount of a fine for messing with the inflation of balls is $25,000 "or whatever the league wants." So it's a clear signal that "Whatever the Pats did, it's got to be worse than everybody else."

And the rationale? "We disproportionately penalized you before in 2008 for something else that other teams were doing, to send a signal about the integrity of the game. We have to figure in the 2008 travesty when deciding how to disproportionately come down on you in 2015."

Feh feh feh. There are more important things.

AQPE said:

Normally I frown on the type of post I'm going to make here, so please excuse me for feeling compelled in this case. Exponent has one of the country's leading air quality meteorology practices, right here in Massachusetts. I know for a fact (through personal contacts, I don't work there myself) that they didn't involve those folks in their "analysis;" those guys found out about Exponent's involvement in this when we all did. I'm confident in my opinion that they are mortified by the methods employed, including in reference to PFiVA's cogent points regarding rain temperature and the availability of relevant weather data. Damn right they had access to that data.

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You ought to ask one of them how they'd get the temp of the rainwater in-game, or if they'd throw up their hands and say "Must be the same as the field temp!"

They had a great possibility to test it correctly:
1. Take a tape, with all plays and between recorded. Add weather changing pattern.
2. Use a temperature-controlled hangar with sprinkler system.
3. Install Field turf.
4. Simulate game condition play-by-play, including contacting with field turf and rain.
5. Do it for both teams conditions.
6. Simulate warm room measurement.
7. Do 4-6 number of times, simulating different ball combinations.

Instead they used hand spray and freezer. More money for bottom line?

PatsFanInVa said:

You ought to ask one of them how they'd get the temp of the rainwater in-game, or if they'd throw up their hands and say "Must be the same as the field temp!"

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For such a respected company their website sucks http://www.exponent.com