What about the models and paleo?

The biggest reason I have been killing time with trying to put together a Tropical Ocean temperature reconstruction is this.  The little blue line is the CMIP5 pi or pre-industrial control run.  I would think that would be part of any model set-up, picking a control period and adjusting the "initial" conditions in this case sea surface temperatures for a large portion of the Indian Ocean.  The Oppo et al 2009 reconstruction is for the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, a pretty critical area because it correlates well with the global temperature anomalies and has some of the warmest waters on the globe.  The control misses the absolute temperature by as much as 1.5 K degrees and the natural variability by about a mile or two.  The IPWP temperatures rose by 0.6K degrees in about 50 years.  Remember that the data used by Oppo et al. was limited to about 50 year data points and then binned to decades for easy comparison to other data including instrumental.  That is about what the current "unprecendented" rate of warming happens to be.  In order to "calibrate" the models, the modelers need high quality data.

That means assuming a peer is competent or doing a bit of research on your own.

There is always the chance that the quality of some of the science just ain't all that impressive.