The Lancet Iraqi Study - Utter Garbage?

You know, Chris, at least FB & I quote our sources. Other than your already refuted stats provided by the IBC, you haven't given us anything to back up your posts.

From the study:

In each neighborhood, in at least the first two households where an adult's death had occurred, the interviewers ended by asking for death certificates. They received confirmation of deaths in 63 of the 78 houses where they asked.

Mr. Garfield says the high proportion of death certificates assuaged his concern that lying might be widespread. In unstable countries, where records of deaths aren't always thorough, ascertaining lies or simply faulty memories becomes difficult.


And why would it be in the Ministry of Health's interests (kind of an Orwellian ministry given the situation) to give out the facts of the real number of death certificates?

And why (if you read all the articles) why would Lancet make up statistics to meet a desired outcome when NONE of their earlier studies have been discredited? In fact, they have been acknowledged as the singular most accurate analysis of deaths in other countries.

If you actually believe that the war has decreased the number of expcted dead in Iraq, then your agenda outweighs all anecdotal, empircal and scientific evidence.

Once again, you obviously don't read any of the links that anyone posts here about this or any other subject.

So read this and get back to me:

http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i22/22a01001.htm

Scientists say the size of the survey was adequate for extrapolation to the entire country. "That's a classical sample size," says Michael J. Toole, head of the Center for International Health at the Burnet Institute, an Australian research organization. Researchers typically conduct surveys in 30 neighborhoods, so the Iraq study's total of 33 strengthens its conclusions. "I just don't see any evidence of significant exaggeration," he says.

David R. Meddings, a medical officer with the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization, says any such survey will have uncertainty because of extrapolation based on small numbers, and because of the possibility that people gave incorrect information about deaths in their households.

"I don't think the authors ignored that or understated" those factors, he says. "Those cautions I don't believe should be applied any more or any less stringently to a study that looks at a politically sensitive conflict than to a study that looks at a pill for heart disease."

The uncertainty leads to the breadth of the so-called 95-percent confidence interval -- in other words, the 95-percent chance that the number of deaths in Iraq resulting from military activities is between 8,000 and 194,000. Critics like the Slate writer seized on that range, says Dr. Woodruff, the government epidemiologist.

"They thought, 'Well, it's just as likely to be 18,000 as 100,000.' That's not true at all," he says. "The further you get away from 100,000, the probability that the number is true gets much smaller."

 

Yes, the probability of the low end and high end numbers are about 2.5 percent each. And the target number is 30 neighborhoods because that meets the standard for performing a z test, a measure of statistical significance. But don't listen to me, I've taken advanced statistics and I have an agenda.

 

Well, maybe you can give Chris L a tutorial.

 

Yeah JR - FB quoted a source that proved this study is legit except that the piece referenced was written last February and cannot vouch for the study we are discussing.

And you seem to confuse cutting and pasting with actual thought. I asked you to explain where those death certificates came from when the government agency responsible for issuing said certificates has no record of them. Think - don't cut and paste. Can you explain where the certificates came from? Does Iraq have a Staples or an Office Max? Maybe that is the explanation. Cereal box? Get one death certificate with every box. Maybe that's it.

If the certificates are phony - then the whole study is phony.

Here's something I'd like you to explain:

Hmmm... the Lancet study based its baseline year on stats provided by Saddam Hussein's regime. You accept those without question and yet you question why the new Iraqi government would give out the real numbers. Its bizarre. You trust Saddam Hussein but not the current Iraqi government.

 

And I keep asking, "Where are YOUR sources?"

Give me one. Cut and paste it.

And while you're at it, give me ONE credible source that invalidates the stats that we've provided.

Give me one source. One.

You're full of blarney and other than the original discredited source you've cited, you have nothing.

Go back to the original study and PROVE that it's wrong with accreditated stastical evidence.

Give it your best shot

 

Which has what to do with the current discussion (other than you apparently are conceding)?

 

Because the present admin is a collection of crooks and liars?

 

What current Iraqi government?

 

I think we've pretty much flogged this one to death.

Next up: Chris's ongoing search for WMD's.

 

The Wall Street Journal questins the methods used in the Lancet study.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009108

 

I'm sure this month's US casuality numbers make Chris feel goood... only 70 US troops killed in 18 days is less than 4 a day.
I guess that's an acceptable number to Chris. I mean, it's war, right? A few dead Americans a day is nothing, right?

 

No, the WSJ doesn't question the Lancet.
Stephen Moore, noted rightist propaganda artist, does.
You can't say a newspaper "says" everything that appears on its op-ed page, and you really can't say that about the WSJ, which has been schizophrenic on this topic ever since Bartley took its editorial page over the cliff in the 1980's,
This is a fundamentally dishonest post.