  Following this astro-ph communication, we release a set of 10,000 WMAP ILC
simulations, produced as described by Eriksen et al. (2004). We strongly
encourage that an analysis of these simulations accompanies any scientific
analysis of the observed ILC map, in order to assess the stability of the
results. For examples of such analyses, we refer the reader to our original
paper. In particular, Figure 1c) and d) show the bias and uncertainty induced
by the ILC method, and Figure 7 shows a sobering examples of a low-l analysis;
the reconstructed quadrupole-octopole alignment is plotted against the true
input alignment, and the correlation is underwhelming. It can hardly be
emphasized too strongly -- the heavily processed full-sky WMAP maps are not
reliable for quantitative analysis, neither at large nor small scales, and they
should only, at best, be used as supportive evidence. We hope that these
simulations will reduce some of the confusion regarding these maps that
currently exists in the community.

Astrophysics