Response to comment on Censoring Trace-Level Environmental Data: Statistical Analysis Considerations to Limit Bias
We appreciate the thoughtful commentary and opportunity to continue the discussion on this important topic of dealing with left-censored data. We thank Prof. Hites for reflecting on our introduction and want to reinforce that the challenges for measurement of trace-level environmental data and their statistical analysis are long-standing, complex, and continually evolving. While there is extensive literature that addresses estimation of the mean in the presence of nondetects, there are relatively few recent papers describing advances in statistical approaches and software capability. We chose to build on the literature by assessing bias in means for Type I left-censored data, using freely available modern statistical software.