Histograms of the peak values of the τ posterior distributions after removing one multipole each time, computed from 8300 simulations with τ = 0.055. For the red curve the maximum value of the 100 × 143 QML power spectrum in the range ℓ = 2−12 is removed, and for the blue curve ℓ = 5 is removed when it happens to be the maximum. The peak value of the τ posterior when removing ℓ = 5 from the data is shown in green, and is consistent with the blue curve, as expected.