^[1] Again, I do not mean to belittle the very real efforts being put forth. It is simply the case that most people doing "research" in operations are ill-equipped (in resources, as well as knowledge and experience) to do important research. The spirit and intent may be there, but the performance is minimized by limited resources and an absence of competent research supervision in many cases.

^[2] Recent events, moreover, are creating new situations. How much of this "research" is going to survive the latest hammerfall due to budget pressures?

^[3] Both training and certification are components of the process for the FAA's air route traffic controllers, proving that it can be done in the Federal Government! I get the feeling that NWS management is searching for excuses rather than solutions, and touting "settle for" measures as answers to major problems.

^[4] To this day, I have no earthly idea to what extent my 10+ years of participation in NWS training has affected the quality of forecasting done by those I "trained." Did it make any difference at all? Was the difference a positive one? No one knows because no one in the NWS ever developed a follow-up program to measure the effectiveness of the training. No such follow-up exists now, nor is one planned for any time in the future.

^[5] Some readers seem to have seized upon the number "10" as a hard and fast number. Anything resembling a careful reading of that conference paper suggests that we believe the number "10" is only an order of magnitude. The current number of offices is of order 100 and we certainly do not believe that the number of offices should be of order "1." Surely meteorologists should understand the concept underlying "order of magnitude" but apparently some have forgotten their education.