On Preferred Axes in WMAP Cosmic Microwave Background Data after
  Subtraction of the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect
  There is currently a debate over the existence of claimed statistical
anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), recently confirmed in
Planck data. Recent work has focussed on methods for measuring statistical
significance, on masks and on secondary anisotropies as potential causes of the
anomalies. We investigate simultaneously the method for accounting for masked
regions and the foreground integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) signal. We search for
trends in different years of WMAP CMB data with different mask treatments. We
reconstruct the ISW field due to the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) and the
NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) up to l=5, and we focus on the Axis of Evil (AoE)
statistic and even/odd mirror parity, both of which search for preferred axes
in the Universe. We find that removing the ISW reduces the significance of
these anomalies in WMAP data, though this does not exclude the possibility of
exotic physics. In the spirit of reproducible research, all reconstructed maps
and codes will be made available for download at
http://www.cosmostat.org/anomaliesCMB.html.
