The Lancet Iraqi Study - Utter Garbage?

Upon further investigation, here's the reason Friends of Fredo are so anxious to debunk the study:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061017.ELECTIONS17/TPStory/Front/?pageRequested=1

With opinion polls showing voters in the mood to punish the Republicans and anger simmering over the bloody war in Iraq, a deeply unpopular President and the sex scandal involving disgraced Florida Congressman Mark Foley, candidates for the governing party are doing whatever they can to survive.

The stakes are high for the Republicans, who face the possibility of losing control of one, or even both, Houses of Congress, breaking a monopoly that stretches back to 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the conservative charge -- under the Contract with America banner -- to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats for the first time since 1954.

And what's worse, Daddy may sic James Baker on Fredo:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2006/10/17/baker/

In perhaps the strangest vindication of that old '60s chestnut "The personal is the political," the fate of America's Iraq adventure may hinge on whether George W. Bush can handle being taken to the woodshed by an emissary of his old man.

And:

Enter James Baker, GOP wise man and old Bush family counselor. Baker, who served as the elder Bush's secretary of state and secretary of treasury, is a consummate fix-it man, a kind of cross between Tom Hagen, Michael Corleone's consigliere in "The Godfather," and Mr. Wolf, the hipster cleanup dude in "Pulp Fiction." It was Baker who pulled Bush's chestnuts out of the fire after the 2000 elections, when he appeared on television to declaim, with the icy authority of a junta colonel, that "the votes have been counted again and again."

 

"What do you mean by valid" pretty much sums up a entire career of argumentation on these boards.

There were some morgues and some death certificates available, and those were factored into the methodology, but it was really no more "speculative" than the applications in the Congolese civil war or Darfur were. Again, why was there no outcry when this method was used in those two cases. The answer lies in American domestic politics, nothing more.

p.s. -- Not that it will change a single mind but here's a good piece on the background of both the study and its methodology, as well as its authors' bona fides.
http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i22/22a01001.htm

 

The Lancet study said that 92% of the people claimed to have death certificates yet the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the Baghdad morgue had only issued 50,000 death certificates. That's a 10-1 discrepency that could have been resolved if the Lancet folks had done some cross checking of the claimed death certificates against the issued death certificates. BASIC FACT CHECKING. Yet the Lancet folks couldn't be bothered because they had to rush to get the "study" out in time for the US elections. The man at the Lancet behind the past two Iraqi studies has said as much.

And Fenian - the article you linked to was written almost a year ago. Did the author have some sort of time machine to verify that this latest study would be Kosher as well? Or are you digging to support something you know to be hinky?

I agree with you that the answer lies in domestic politics. The Lancet folks are willing to sacrifice their scientific credibility in order to try and effect domestic (US and UK) elections based solely on the political views of those running the magazine and not based upon the facts on the ground in Iraq.

 

It's big news every time any kind of attack in Iraq results in 15-20 dying in a day in Iraq, yet these lefties are asking us to believe that another 230-500 are dying a day with virtually no reporting on them.

A perfect example of how they're running for cover is the fact that they're trying to shovel a number of 300K when the report said 650K. And they also neglect the fact that this war has not had a front line or troops engaging in battle against other troops since about May of 2003. It's a made-up number that is a wild fantasy. At 650K, that would mean about 520 deaths a day, every day, for the last 3 1/2 years. Fenian knows that couldn't possibly be true, so he cowers and decides that if 650K can't possibly be true, then it must be 300K -- a number that means 250 dead a day, EVERT DAY -- and then tries to argue "methodology" and cites sources like The Guardian as neutral, balanced and objective.

Normally I'd just laugh and say "nice try," but all I'm left to do in this case is just laugh. This was a nice try about as much as the Oakland Raiders are leading contenders for the Super Bowl.

 

Chris --
If you are prepared to call the study fraudulent, you're going to have to show me more credentials as a statistician and an epidemiologist than you have so far. The methodology was sound a year ago. It's sound todya. It will be sound tomorrow. It has been accepted as sound in a dozen different places including the Congo and Darfur. As for old tony. if he doesn't recognize the difference between a statistical range and one end of one, he's beyond help.

 

What I'm failing to understand here is how the number of deaths in Iraq strengthens anyone's position.

Please, one side or the other, explain how it possibly matters if 650,000 or 250,000 have been killed.

Thanks. I'll hang up and listen.

 

OK, Chris, this one's for you. Tony is beyond help in any of this:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003255073

I loved when President Bush said ‘their methodology has been pretty well discredited,’” Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report, told the Christian Science Monitor. “That’s exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s been involved in mortality research who thinks there’s a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there’s a better way to do it.”

The sampling "is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets,” said John Zogby, whose polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began. “It is what people in the statistics business do.” Zogby said similar survey methods have been used to estimate casualty figures in other conflicts, such as Darfur and the Congo.

and

On “Democracy Now, ” Les Roberts explained that “this cluster survey approach is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war. And when UNICEF goes out and measures mortality in any developing country, this is what they do. When the U.S. government went at the end of the war in Kosovo or went at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. government measured the death rate, this is how they did it. And most ironically, the U.S. government has been spending millions of dollars per year, through something called the Smart Initiative, to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.”

I think that just about wraps it up here. Move along, folks.

 

It's only 30,000, dog. No, sorry, 60,000. Anyway, "lots" of innocent people.
So says the MBA in the White House.
His heart bleeds.
And JR? You know you're pissing in the wind with that last line, right?
Democracy Now? Liberal, liberal, liberal!
Friends of the guys who did the study? Sure, right.
Cue the usual suspects. 3...2..1.

 

Damn liberals and their democracy.

Let's lock 'em up with the suspected "terrorists".

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061017.wusterr1017/BNStory/International/home


The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning – such as rape, torture and “cruel and inhuman” treatment – but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Mr. Bush said the process is “fair, lawful and necessary.”

Terrorists win another round. Damn pesky habeas corpus.

 

So the guy who works closely with a number of the authors of the report is supposed to be an impartial source? Yeah right.

Oh and if this methodology is widely accepted and OK then answer me this - the UN and UNICEF used this same methodology pre-war to say that 150,000 Iraqi's (with 60,000 children under the age of 5 in that number) were dying every year because of the economic sanctions against Iraq - why isn't that number being accepted as the base year number if the same methodology is to be used throughout?

Instead the Lancet folks use the Iraqi government suppied data which gives them a 5 deaths per thousand baseline.

If the UN numbers using the methodology you all so admire were used then the conclusion would have to be that the invasion of Iraq saved the lives of 150,000 people (give or take a +/- margin of error of 25%).

The UN used skewered numbers before the war using this methodology in order to try and end the sanctions (and it has been well documented that they were doing so because of oil for food bribes and rampant corrupt practices at the UN). Now the Lancet is using skewered numbers in order to promote an anti- US anti-Bush position.

If you want to accept the Lancet numbers then fine - you have to accept the pre-war UN numbers too.

 

Chris, have you ever heard of peer-evaluated research? Every article I've read on this says categorically that the methodology is correct and the results are accurate. You still haven't shown any credible source to disprove it.

 

So the guy from Harvard is chopped liver?