Quote:
Originally Posted by Amnorix
Facts. They can be a pain in the ass.
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Yep straight from the official investigation and from the scientific engineer/physics professor that studied the case.
Source: Wells Report
The science
■ Investigators hired Exponent, a scientific and engineering consulting firm, and Dr. Daniel R. Marlow, a physics professor at Princeton University, to spearhead the scientific aspects of the case.
■ Exponent found that the loss of air pressure in the Patriots’ footballs could not be explained by any “environmental or physical factors.” The firm accounted for temperature, weather conditions, football actions, functionality, and reliability of the gauges used, and human error.
None of the tests, according to the report, could account for such a “statistically significant” loss of air pressure, which was on average 0.45 to 1.02 less than the Colts’ footballs at halftime.
“This absence of a credible scientific explanation for the Patriots’ halftime measurements tends to support a finding that human intervention may account for the additional loss of pressure exhibited by the Patriots balls,” the report reads.
■ The firm found that a needle can be inserted to release air from 13 footballs in “well under one minute and forty seconds,” the time the report states McNally spent in the bathroom with the footballs after taking them from the officials locker room before the game. Exponent, however, didn’t definitively conclude “there was or was not tampering” based solely on its timing simulations. “The analysis of such data is ultimately dependent upon assumptions and information that is uncertain,” the report reads.
■ Exponent created the same game-day conditions that existed on Jan. 18 and ran experiments to try to achieve the same loss of pressure as the Patriots footballs. It didn’t happen. “Exponent concluded that the average pressures recorded for the Patriots game balls during halftime of the AFC Championship Game were lower than the lowest average pressures attained by the simulations,” the report reads.