Lancet's Iraq body count debunked

[blutoski]

The article linked in the OP addresses this.

Not very well. They display the two totals on the same bar graph, then add a footnote that the totals represent different criteria and you have to read the text to understand that they cover different timeframes. It would be appropriate to compare the L2 with an adjusted Death Count total. I predict this would reduce the discrepancy closer to statistical error.

 

[Praktik]

And the real problem with this is that we end up debating numbers and methodology - and end up avoiding contemplating just how horrific day to day life is and has been for the average Iraqi.

The OP posts this with a smirk, but in so doing, he reveals that politics and partisanship has trumped his empathy.

 

[danielk]

The OP posts this with a smirk, but in so doing, he reveals that politics and partisanship has trumped his empathy.

Now this is silly. By this logic the one with the highest number wins by default. Also, it works both ways -- if your argument is that the lower number is already high enough (which it is), why are you defending the exaggeration?

 

[davefoc]

I doubt the high death figure reports.

But I don't think this article successfully debunks them. I scanned through most of it and didn't find any meat, just a lot of opinions that I thought might be right but without any significant evidence especially any new evidence to back them up.

 

[Puppycow]

We had a couple threads about this back in September.
One in Politics Here
One in Science Here

I maintained at the time, and still maintain that the Lancet figures could not be accurate because, for one thing, they implied well over 100 K deaths by car bomb alone.

Iraq Body Count has also debunked the Lancet figures here (IBC is definitely not some apologists for the Bush Administration; they are very harsh critics. But they are honest and reality-based.)

Also worth reading is this

Someone asked, "So what"? Does it matter if the death toll is 80K to 150 K or 655 K as Lancet estimated or 1.2 million as another survey suggested? Personally I think that makes a huge difference, although even the low-end estimates suggest a very high cost.

 

[Puppycow]

It debunks nothing.

I'm wondering what the lottery numbers are. That's not going to give them to me. The survey used a standard procedure used in other areas of the world. In those other surveys, no-one has questioned the figures. Sampling populations is done all the time, and has been shown to be amazingly accurate.

Let's be generous, and assume a huge error margin. 300,000 people have died. Still sounds like a lot to me.

Let's not be generous, let's be reality-based. The study does not hold up to skeptical inquiry. It is not merely a matter of "error margin."

 

[NoZed Avenger]

I doubt the high death figure reports.

But I don't think this article successfully debunks them. I scanned through most of it and didn't find any meat, just a lot of opinions that I thought might be right but without any significant evidence especially any new evidence to back them up.

Because the Lancet authors have refused to disclose their data sheets and other original information to support a review of their methodology, I am not quite sure what kind of new evidence could be forthcoming, however.

 

[a_unique_person]

Let's not be generous, let's be reality-based. The study does not hold up to skeptical inquiry. It is not merely a matter of "error margin."

??? It is a standard methodology. It holds up as well as any other study.

 

[Puppycow]

??? It is a standard methodology. It holds up as well as any other study.

The point is that it does not hold up as well as any other study. There's much here that suggests outright fraud in the data gathering, in which case methodology is irrelevant.

 

[Puppycow]

By the way, I'm basically against the Iraq War. That is, I think it was a big mistake. Huge mistake. I'm not arguing this because I support Bush and his gang of Keystone Kops. Likewise, IBC is against the war. If you take a careful look, and read the various debunkings linked to (would take some time to read and process them all) I think you would come to the same conclusion.

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

Puppycow gets it. Thanks.

 

[a_unique_person]

The Iraq body count is useless.

The Iraqi's themselves come up with a far higher number.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2006/11/11/1786178.htm

Iraq's Health Ministry says up to 150,000 people have died since the 2003 US-led invasion, as outgoing US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged the problems in fighting insurgents.
While the country's Shiite and Sunni Arabs attended weekly prayers amid a relative lull in violence, clerics from the majority Muslim sect called for the speedy execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
In violence on the ground, a powerful blast killed an Iraqi army colonel and his five bodyguards in the northern town of Tall Afar.
Revising its earlier estimates, the Health Ministry said that between 100,000 and 150,000 people have been killed since the invasion which toppled Saddam.
It earlier said 150,000 people had died, as reported in the media quoting Health Minister Ali al-Shamari on Thursday during a visit to Vienna.
"The minister was misquoted. He said between 100,000-150,000 people were killed in three-and-a-half years," an official with the ministry said after having initially confirmed the higher figure.
He said the victims were killed "during military confrontations, assassinations and sectarian assassinations," adding that another 70 to 80 people were dying in violence each day.
The ministry had started keeping records only since early 2004, the official noted, effectively meaning that those killed during the actual invasion and in the ensuing months were not included in this figure.

 

[a_unique_person]

A detailed defense of the study.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2007/1815673.htm

 

[Ziggurat]

The war was supposed to be self financing. No one said that theory actually worked out.

No. Reconstruction was supposed to be self-financing. But having Iraqis pay for their own reconstruction is not exactly equivalent to looting the place.

 

[Trakar]

Data Bomb (National Journal)

I suppose prostituting your institutional reputation is worth it if you can save lives that way. Of course it's a trick that cannot be repeated.

They can't help it, they're the National Journal, they merely do what their politics demand of them.

 

[Trakar]

I have no objection to moving the thread to 'Politics'.

Indeed that emphasizes the nature of Lancet's claims.

Lancet or the study's authors?
The editor of Lancet has said that if clear evidence of misconduct is presented to The Lancet, they would be happy to go ask the authors and the institution for an official inquiry, and that they would then abide by the conclusion of that inquiry. Unfortunately , so far all that has arisen are politically laced commentary and aspersion from the typical sources who are uncomfortable with the report's conclusions. It would seem that if there were serious problems and any evidence of malfeasance or incompetence such would be presented in an official manner as is handled on a regular basis for all manner of journal publication studies that are found to be seriously flawed or fraudulent. But apparently it is much easier to impune and dismiss this study than it is to actually and legitimately refute its methods and findings.

 

[danielk]

TShaitanaku, you are the one who simply dismisses the analysis because you think it comes from the wrong political source.

 

[marting]

Les Roberts doesn't question the validity of the data collected. After all, the collector was on a mission from God.

"his Muslim friend Lafta not to go" into Falluja, according to an interview with a magazine published by Johns Hopkins. Roberts told the interviewer that Lafta replied, "God has picked these clusters. If God wants me, he will take me. I must go." Roberts also said of Lafta, "I know no one [who] perceives themselves so humbly to be a tool of God's destiny.... He sees his science as synonymous with service to God."

 

[Ziggurat]

Lancet or the study's authors?

Probably both. Are you aware, for example, that the editors of the Lancet mischaracterized the Lancet 1 study as measuring excess civilian deaths, not total excess deaths? That mischaracterization made it into MANY newspaper accounts of the article. If it was intentional, well, the implications are rather obvious. But even if it were accidental, it's hard to see how they could make such a fundamental mistake unless they were looking for that sort of result to publish.

The editor of Lancet has said that if clear evidence of misconduct is presented to The Lancet, they would be happy to go ask the authors and the institution for an official inquiry, and that they would then abide by the conclusion of that inquiry. Unfortunately , so far all that has arisen are politically laced commentary and aspersion from the typical sources who are uncomfortable with the report's conclusions.

Given that the source material is all inaccessible to anyone wanting to check their results, and the person most likely to have committed misconduct (if it took place) isn't answering questions, where exactly do you expect the evidence to come from? Stonewalling sometimes works, you know.

It would seem that if there were serious problems and any evidence of malfeasance or incompetence such would be presented in an official manner

Maybe that will happen eventually. But in most cases of serious scholarly misconduct, the initial objections, questions, etc. aren't raised in any "official manner". It's fine to withhold any conclusions. But it's rather foolish to conclude that the lack of any "official" investigation or complaint is itself evidence that there was no misconduct. Doesn't work that way.

But apparently it is much easier to impune and dismiss this study than it is to actually and legitimately refute its methods and findings.

Oh, but that's been done too. Among one of the study's more obvious flaws is the fact that they collected basically no demographic data by which to compare their sample to the Iraqi population as a whole. If, for example, you polled 70 democrats and 30 republicans, asking who they'll vote for as president, would you expect the answer to accurately reflect the entire voting population? No, you wouldn't (or at least you shouldn't). That's why pollsters ask questions about the respondants beyond just what they want to know directly, so they can correct or at least estimate the error in the result due to differences between the sample population and the total population of interest. But that didn't happen here. To place any confidence in the resulting numbers, ESPECIALLY when they conflict so dramatically with other sources (including the UNDP survey, which also used sampling methods but was FAR more exteinsive and did measure demographic information), is foolish, whether or not there was any deliberate misconduct at any stage.

 

[Beerina]

My point would be that even one murder of an innocent in a needless, stupidly planned and executed invasion is blood on our hands. No amount of piling-on makes matters worse; We are all still murderers for having allowed this.

Furthermore, I would like to apologize for murdering many Germans and Japanese during WWII. Bad U.S.! Bad! Bad!

And when we swept into some concentration camps, but some Jews were too far gone to save, and we fed 'em, and they died anyway? I'm sorry about killing them. We should have stayed home and not gone murdering Jews by feeding their starving, weak bodies food.

Oh wait! If we had stayed home, we'd be responsible for it anyway because we didn't get involved.

We should just kill ourselves! The world would be better off without the Americans! I keep forgetting that the best state is one where everyone lives, cowed, under a vicious dicataorship, where they remain alive and subservient.

Better that than dead fighting for the useless concept of "freedom"? Yes, much better to be alive and subservient to a vicious dictator, who kills far less than an act to free ourselves would.

Yes, that is my proper conclusion, reached while sitting safely in a free country, far far away. We should be dead, and it is wrong to kill people to free yourselves because that's murder.