Reply to the comment on “Geologic evidence for chaotic behavior of the planets and its constraints on the third-order eustatic sequences at the end of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age” by Qiang Fang, Huaichun Wu, Linda A. Hinnov, Xiuchun Jing, Xunlian Wang, and

In their comment, Smith et al. (2016) discount the astronomical cycle identifications made from Middle Permian cyclostratigraphy in our recent paper (Fang et al. 2015), declaring that we presented defective null models and improper hypothesis tests, and greatly overestimated the statistical significance of cycles. Here we respond in detail to clarify the decisions that were made in our work, and to correct errors and omissions and other misunderstandings arising in their comment. We also discuss the advent of objective methodologies that promise to improve research in cyclostratigraphy in the near future.