I have a problem with most of the media on this. The math is not PhD level hard, but it's difficult.
Here is what Wells vs. AEI have done. Wells started with a bunch of data points can tried to fit an equation around them (multiple linear regression, which simply means multiple variables affected the PSI and the change at a constant rate with those variables). According to AEI, Wells chose only "Patriots effect" as the only variable, while AEI chose to add more. Which is right? It's been 30 years since my undergraduate stats class and I don't know.
What should happen is someone in the media should talk to some statistics professors and ask them to take the same data and run the test. How would they determine who is right? Like any statistics model, you plug the numbers in and it spits out an answer. However, when you do regression like this, you also can compute a number that reflects how close your answer reflects the data. This is called r-squared or the "coefficient of determination". Nobody, AEI or Wells tells us what their r-squared was. Typically, when we did a test, you start as simple as possible and if your r-squared is too low (closer to 1.0 is best), you add variables. I suspect AEI had a better r-squared because it tried to account for the changes in the passage of time inside a warm locker room.
But, I don't know. My point is -- why didn't anyone in the media -- Bedard -- heck, even some journalism intern at SI could have contacted some stats professors and asked what they would do in a situation like this. Preferably, non football fans even. But, Bedard and others seem to treat this as a he-said, she-said between Wells and AEI when it's the science that's important.
The physics is hard, the math is hard, the Patriots have been punished before and a lot of people like to bring the big dog down -- so, it's not surprising a lot of fans think the Patriots are guilty. But, media people are just lazy -- no matter who is actually right.