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Perhaps you know much more about this than I do. My memory is that the Lancet authors were serious, qualified researchers who had done much similar work in the

by gruseom 13y ago

Perhaps you know much more about this than I do. My memory is that the Lancet authors were serious, qualified researchers who had done much similar work in the past and whose objectivity had not previously been disputed. If there's a critique to be made of their work, a snarky "that can't be right" blog post certainly doesn't cut it. The authors of the new PLoS study say that they've taken into account criticisms of earlier work; I am sure they have the Lancet articles (among others) in mind, but I do not know the details. The Iraq Body Count project has bothered me for years because they only count individually confirmable deaths. There is nothing wrong with that as documentary work, but there is something terribly wrong with citing the number of deaths so counted as anything like a credible total for the war, when it is obviously a severe lower bound. War is random and chaotic. Very many people die whose paperwork does not get filled out. It is painfully obvious that statistical techniques are required to arrive at a good estimate under such circumstances. Thus to cite the Iraq Body Count as the total number of deaths in the war is dishonest, yet that is exactly how it has routinely been cited, and I don't understand why they (or at least the people who quote them in media pieces) have not been called out on this more often.

berntb 13y ago
Uh, I can't see how that is relevant to the specific points I raised. (It isn't relevant to talk about someone else using the IBC data in a way IBC don't recommend. And there were lots of criticism before, see the first Lancet report. It is not good with a political motive either -- timing reports to influence an election.) 1. So you have no answer to the Iraq Body Count reality check and just ignore it? (E.g. where is the conspiracy needed to hide all the missing maimed -- and make their prostheses?!) 2. Nothing to say about the scathing criticism of lacking integrity in the second link? 3. Considering your lack of answers on 1 and 2, you might want to retract the claim that others put their heads in the sand. :-) 4. And a new point: You are aware of that Beth Osborne is a Lancet Report critic? She has documented integrity since she got problems from "too high" mortality values in the first Gulf war... And many other heavyweights in exactly the right field? 5. A second new point: Wikileaked papers also contradict the numbers -- and there is no sign of a big conspiracy in WikiLeaks to hide point 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Total_death_count http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Total_d... Since you have just ignored my references and arguments, I guess there is nothing else to say? (The point 1 I have asked about since it was reported, never a relevant answer.)
- gruseom 13y ago
  I'm not having the kind of argument with you that you seem to think I am. I looked at the articles you mentioned. Certainly their criticisms are devastating if, and only if, they are true and fair. Are they? I can't say. I don't have time to read the studies. If you have, and you've arrived at your beliefs based on factual analysis rather than ideology, that's good. My point about IBC was not intended to dispute what you said, but rather to vent something that has bothered me for a long time. Sorry that wasn't clear. I feel slightly justified by the fact that your second link does the very thing I was complaining about: these results were anywhere from seven to 14 times as high as other credible estimates, including those made by the non-partisan Iraq Body Count, a consortium of U.S. and U.K researchers, also concerned about the human toll of the war This is deeply misleading. IBC's number is guaranteed to be a far underestimate: there's no credible scenario under which all or even most of the deaths in a bloody, messy war could be neatly individually documented, not to mention accessible to foreign researchers over the internet. That's like counting individual raindrops and adding only the drops you counted to produce an estimate of total rainfall. A proper statistical study would be expected to come up with a much higher number; an order of magnitude difference is probably not unreasonable. That doesn't prove the Lancet study was proper; perhaps other criticisms are more serious. But this is the only one I feel able to comment on and the fact that they included it without pointing out that it is comparing an apple with a raisin does not give me confidence. (Neither does your description of these documents as "hilarious". I don't see any hilarity there. I do smell an ideological agenda.) This may be unfair of me, but I can't help feeling suspicious of the fact that IBC hasn't done more to counteract this widespread—I'd even say universal, based on what I've seen—misuse of their data for absurd lowballing of the damage caused by that war. They say their motivation is to do justice to the human tragedy of the war. Shouldn't they be the first to object to dishonest uses of their work which obscure how tragic it was?
  - berntb 13y ago
    You still ignore every argument I wrote. Including the internal documents (Wikileaks). So I'll not add more arguments, just a quick note: AGAIN -- IBC write explicitly they are a lower bound. Claims 7-14 times greater than the IBC do need good papers -- from authors that haven't been criticized on moral grounds, for not releasing data timely and doesn't look to have political motives. That is not the Lancet Report... (And what an organization specialized in polling write about other subjects is not so interesting anyway, but you lack everything else?)

by gruseom 13y ago

berntb 13y ago

Uh, I can't see how that is relevant to the specific points I raised. (It isn't relevant to talk about someone else using the IBC data in a way IBC don't recommend. And there were lots of criticism before, see the first Lancet report. It is not good with a political motive either -- timing reports to influence an election.) 1. So you have no answer to the Iraq Body Count reality check and just ignore it? (E.g. where is the conspiracy needed to hide all the missing maimed -- and make their prostheses?!) 2. Nothing to say about the scathing criticism of lacking integrity in the second link? 3. Considering your lack of answers on 1 and 2, you might want to retract the claim that others put their heads in the sand. :-) 4. And a new point: You are aware of that Beth Osborne is a Lancet Report critic? She has documented integrity since she got problems from "too high" mortality values in the first Gulf war... And many other heavyweights in exactly the right field? 5. A second new point: Wikileaked papers also contradict the numbers -- and there is no sign of a big conspiracy in WikiLeaks to hide point 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Total_death_count http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Total_d... Since you have just ignored my references and arguments, I guess there is nothing else to say? (The point 1 I have asked about since it was reported, never a relevant answer.)

gruseom 13y ago
I'm not having the kind of argument with you that you seem to think I am. I looked at the articles you mentioned. Certainly their criticisms are devastating if, and only if, they are true and fair. Are they? I can't say. I don't have time to read the studies. If you have, and you've arrived at your beliefs based on factual analysis rather than ideology, that's good. My point about IBC was not intended to dispute what you said, but rather to vent something that has bothered me for a long time. Sorry that wasn't clear. I feel slightly justified by the fact that your second link does the very thing I was complaining about: these results were anywhere from seven to 14 times as high as other credible estimates, including those made by the non-partisan Iraq Body Count, a consortium of U.S. and U.K researchers, also concerned about the human toll of the war This is deeply misleading. IBC's number is guaranteed to be a far underestimate: there's no credible scenario under which all or even most of the deaths in a bloody, messy war could be neatly individually documented, not to mention accessible to foreign researchers over the internet. That's like counting individual raindrops and adding only the drops you counted to produce an estimate of total rainfall. A proper statistical study would be expected to come up with a much higher number; an order of magnitude difference is probably not unreasonable. That doesn't prove the Lancet study was proper; perhaps other criticisms are more serious. But this is the only one I feel able to comment on and the fact that they included it without pointing out that it is comparing an apple with a raisin does not give me confidence. (Neither does your description of these documents as "hilarious". I don't see any hilarity there. I do smell an ideological agenda.) This may be unfair of me, but I can't help feeling suspicious of the fact that IBC hasn't done more to counteract this widespread—I'd even say universal, based on what I've seen—misuse of their data for absurd lowballing of the damage caused by that war. They say their motivation is to do justice to the human tragedy of the war. Shouldn't they be the first to object to dishonest uses of their work which obscure how tragic it was?
- berntb 13y ago
  You still ignore every argument I wrote. Including the internal documents (Wikileaks). So I'll not add more arguments, just a quick note: AGAIN -- IBC write explicitly they are a lower bound. Claims 7-14 times greater than the IBC do need good papers -- from authors that haven't been criticized on moral grounds, for not releasing data timely and doesn't look to have political motives. That is not the Lancet Report... (And what an organization specialized in polling write about other subjects is not so interesting anyway, but you lack everything else?)