Cancer rise in Fallujah

Captain.Sassy said:
k
so
30% non-response and you have 80/1000 babies dying at birth in Fallujah

"There were 34 deaths in the age group 0–1 in this period giving a rate of 80 deaths per 1,000 births."


So

Say that the 30% non-respondents all had NO baby deaths, thus giving you the maximum possible bias against the study's conclusion that the Fallujah death rate is elevated

(if I do something wrong please point it out here)

So (1000/0.7)=1428

So 80 dead babies per 1428 births

So your new ratio per thousand (including the 30% perfect health fallujahns) is 56/1000

From the study:
"This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p < 0.00001) 17 in Jordan in 2008 and 9.7 in Kuwait in 2008."

It seems (to me) that even if you had no dead babies in the 30% of surveyed Fallujahns that didn't respond, you'd still have an elevated dead baby rate in Fallujah.
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Compared to Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait, sure. But since we don't know what was the death rate of infants in Fallujah before the war and we don't know how other effects of the war affected them, we can't conclude it was an environmental hazard caused by DU.

McHrozni
 
Are we seriously going to act like there is nothing else that may be responsible for this?
 
McHrozni said:
Compared to Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait, sure. But since we don't know what was the death rate of infants in Fallujah before the war and we don't know how other effects of the war affected them, we can't conclude it was an environmental hazard caused by DU.

McHrozni
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Ok, we can get back onto the argument of 'before' vs. 'after' (though I don't know where we're going to go with that- the Fallujah doctors say that things got worse; nobody has presented any evidence or even anecdotes that things were always this bad in Fallujah).

But at least we can put aside the trope of "30% didn't respond, rates of babies dying at birth might not be elevated in Fallujah at all", right?
 
Travis said:
Are we seriously going to act like there is nothing else that may be responsible for this?
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Like having a self-selecting sample, you mean?

There is a problem with that. It doesn't permit anyone to single out US, Israel or the Jews as one of the main culprits in the suffering and deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people. As such the suffering becomes entirely uninteresting.

McHrozni
 
Travis said:
Are we seriously going to act like there is nothing else that may be responsible for this?
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Not at all. McHronzi is mounting a spirited defence of the 'cigarettes' thesis, and Fire Garden is attacking it. If you like you are more than free to introduce your own hypothesis, or defend the cigarette hypothesis.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Ok, we can get back onto the argument of 'before' vs. 'after' (though I don't know where we're going to go with that- the Fallujah doctors say that things got worse; nobody has presented any evidence or even anecdotes that things were always this bad in Fallujah).

But at least we can put aside the trope of "30% didn't respond, rates of babies dying at birth might not be elevated in Fallujah at all", right?
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You're claiming the chance of Fallujah doctors being wrong or lying for political reasons is negligible and that the chance of anyone conjuring up the reports about Fallujah doctors coping with more birth defects (e.g. by selecting for certain doctors) as infinitesimal. You're also saying it's impossible for certain groups with special interests (e.g. Al-Queda) to pay doctors to complain in order to stir anti-American feelings. Why?
Can you at least try to justify that? You can't justify it, but can you at least try, please?

McHrozni
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Not at all. McHronzi is mounting a spirited defence of the 'cigarettes' thesis, and Fire Garden is attacking it. If you like you are more than free to introduce your own hypothesis, or defend the cigarette hypothesis.
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It's McHrozni, and not McHronzi, and the cigarettes is hardly the thesis I support. I offered it as a possible alternative to Uranium. There certainly is more reasons to believe in that than in Uranium.

McHrozni
(and not McHronzi)
 
McHrozni said:
...Fallujah doctors ... lying for political reasons ...conjuring up the reports about...birth defects (e.g. by selecting for certain doctors) ... Al-Queda...pay doctors to complain in order to stir anti-American feelings.

Can you at least try to justify that? You can't justify it, but can you at least try, please?
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No, because this is all completely baseless and conspiratorial speculation which doesn't deserve to be addressed.

I'm sorry about the repeated mis-spellings of your name.

Does McHrozni mean anything?
 
McHrozni said:
You did address it. Nothing you said convinces me we should discard it.

McHrozni
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Ok but I thought those numbers showed taht even with a 30% non-response rate giving the maximum bias against the reports conclusions, those calculations showed that the inclusion of those non-respondents wouldn't have been sufficient to alter the report's main finding of an elevated dying baby ratio in Fallujah? If you agree with the arithmetic, why should this argument not be discarded?
 
Captain.Sassy said:
No, because this is all completely baseless and conspiratorial speculation which doesn't deserve to be addressed.
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Well if you aren't going to support it, there is no reason not to dismiss it as completely worthless anecdotal "evidence". They're probably wrong and that's that.

Does McHrozni mean anything?
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Not that I would know, but if you're addressing me by nick at least spell it right, Captain Sissy ... Sassy! ;)

McHrozni
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Ok but I thought those numbers showed taht even with a 30% non-response rate giving the maximum bias against the reports conclusions, those calculations showed that the inclusion of those non-respondents wouldn't have been sufficient to alter the report's main finding of an elevated dying baby ratio in Fallujah? If you agree with the arithmetic, why should this argument not be discarded?
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Because it compares a war-ravaged town in an impoverished country which has been at war on and off with it's neighbors and itself for 20 years or so with three peaceful and significantly wealthier countries. This was pointed out to you before.

McHrozni
 
McHrozni said:
Because it compares a war-ravaged town in an impoverished country which has been at war on and off with it's neighbors and itself for 20 years or so with three peaceful and significantly wealthier countries. This was pointed out to you before.

McHrozni
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Okay, I'm only talking about the response rate invalidating the survey.

We can agree to leave that alone now, right?
 
Captain.Sassy said:
I don't understand this paragraph.
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I was trying to tell you that unless you give some reasons why we should believe this particular anecdotal evidence without anything solid to back it up, we should treat it as any other anecdotal evidence without anything solid to back it up and throw it out the window.

McHrozni
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Okay, I'm only talking about the response rate invalidating the survey.

We can agree to leave that alone now, right?
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Well my primary position is that the response rate and the way the survey was performed makes the survey invalid. So no, not really. We can discuss in the context of assuming the study being valid, but only if you accept that we're talking hypothetically, if the study were valid. FireGarden forgot about it, so I have to request this.

McHrozni
 
Saying 'we can't trust the doctors cause Al Qaeda' is conspiracy theory.

I agree that the doctors' testimony would be weakened if there were evidence of Fallujah always having elevated dying baby rates, or if there were evidence of Al Qaeda paying off Fallujah doctors to lie. Do you have evidence of either?
 
McHrozni said:
Well...the response rate ...makes the survey invalid.
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I think I showed it doesn't invalidate the survey's results by using the most extreme case of how the non-response could bias the result and demonstrating that the death rate is still higher in Fallujah. But I could be mistaken so if I am please show me how.

There are other reasons the report's conclusions could be invalid, but I don't think the response rate is one of them.
 
Captain.Sassy said:
Saying 'we can't trust the doctors cause Al Qaeda' is conspiracy theory.

I agree that the doctors' testimony would be weakened if there were evidence of Fallujah always having elevated dying baby rates, or if there were evidence of Al Qaeda paying off Fallujah doctors to lie. Do you have evidence of either?
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No, I don't. But I'm not required to show the said claim is inaccurate, you need to supply reason or reasons to accept it. I don't have to take a report that allegedly came from doctors in Fallujah that could have many different explanations, some far-fetched (Al-Queda at work) and some quite mundane (fewer doctors working on the same number of kids) at face value.

McHrozni
 
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