From: Langenberg, Heike

Sent: March 26, 2004 10:58 AM

To: Stephen Mcintyre

Subject: RE: Nature corrigendum Mann02478

Dear Dr McIntyre,

Thanks for your further notes regarding your materials complaint, which my colleague Dinah Ashman has forwarded to me for assessment.

In response to the points you raise, we have asked Dr Mann to include the time series Vaganov #55 in Table 1 of the Corrigendum. We feel that the additional issues mentioned under "Listing of the Series" are not directly relevant to the materials complaint. Instead you question the consistency of the methods used, which is not the subject of a Corrigendum.

You also make a number of additional comments to the Corrigendum, but for reasons of space constraints, we insist that such publications are as concise as possible. We feel that the current version, together with the Supplementary Information explicitly listing the data sets and methods used, clearly establishes which data were used in the paper.

Thank you for offering to review the new Supplementary Information for us.

We appreciate that you give us the option, but as you anticipate, we prefer to handle the matter differently.

I hope you find this satisfactory. We will continue the production process of the Corrigendum as soon as we have heard back from Dr Mann on the addition to Table 1, and will publish it as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Heike Langenberg

Senior Editor