1st off, this starts out reading like some of the labs I wrote in Ecology and will write in other Envi. Sci. courses. "Statistically Significant" is the bane of my existence--I hated statistics when I took it and I hate trying to remember (i.e. not screw up) whether a number bigger than alpha means it's significant or whether it's supposed to be lower than alpha to be significant. And seriously, just because a number isn't statistically significant doesn't mean that it isn't a hell of a lot close enough to be so.
As for the "trick" seems to me that taking KNOWN inaccurate data out of the mix. In other words he was using tree-ring data which did not correspond with known data measured by instruments, so there was obviously an error in the tree-ring data which is much harder to measure accurately. Trust me, I know a LOT about inaccurate data gathering, which is why I don't plan to become a real scientist.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
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