Science and casualty figures in Iraq: lancing the Lancet boil
The famous 2006 Lancet study indicating there had been more than ten times the previous estimates of Iraqi deaths in the war and postwar period engendered a storm of controversy right from the outset. How could such a huge number of deaths have gone unnoticed, and why were there not a similarly enormous number of accompanying wounded?
Now comes an in-depth review by Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon in National Journal that describes deeply flawed methodology, refusal to release data, failure to implement routine safeguards against outright fabrication, and other suspicious findings (such as a 98% subject response rate to the questionaire) in the Lancet study.
The details are in the National Journal piece; read it to get the full flavor. There’s no need to recap them here; suffice to say that the data is highly suspect. There have even been so many problems with the study that officials of the Iraq Body Count (who are strongly antiwar themselves) consider the Lancet figures bogus and have issued a strong and devastating critique of it as well. The use of and misuse of science for political ends is not new, but it is shocking how easy the latter can be to accomplish.
All of the people responsible for this study, including those who funded it, had an anti-Bush and antiwar political agenda. They did not even bother to hide that fact. This does not mean they cannot do research in the field, but it does mean that they have an extra responsibility to assure that their research methods are impeccable.
Here’s a quote from Les Roberts, one of the study’s three authors, that highlights the problem:
Roberts, who opposed removing Saddam from power, is the most politically outspoken of the authors. He initiated the first Lancet study and repeatedly used its conclusions to criticize Bush. “I consider myself an advocate,” Roberts told an interviewer in early 2007. “When you start working documenting events in war, the public health response—the most important public health response—is ending the war.”
So much for scientific objectivity, difficult enough to ensure in the best of circumstances, and not even attempted here. It is a potential problem when advocates undertake research, but Roberts (a scientist, after all) seems unaware of the pitfalls involved.
Nor does he appear to have considered any possible difficulties connected with the hiring a former government official who had served under Saddam and authored articles back then on the pernicious health effects of Western sanctions, Riyadh Lafta. Lafta himself has been mum about the details of his methodology, although he was in charge of the actual compiling of the Lancet statistics, which was performed by six Iraqi interviewers under his supervision.
As for Lafta’s attitude towards the study and towards science:
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.
Not necessarily a problem—after all, Kepler felt somewhat the same. But certainly this, along with Lafta’s political background and secretive methods, should give one pause.
But studies such as Lancet’s are not meant to be scrutinized with only the cold light of statistical methods and logic. They are meant to be brought to the public and to convince politically. That is why, when Roberts sent his research data to Lancet, he insisted that it must come out before the election.
That in and of itself ought to have have raised such deeply red flags for Lancet’s editors that they should have been exceedingly wary of this research, and been spurred on to make especially sure it was impeccably done. Apparently that did not happen, which represents either a cooperation on their part with the dangerous practice of using science for political purposes, a tremendous naivete about it, or perhaps both.
There evidence it’s the former rather than the latter:
[Horton], the Lancet editor who agreed to rush their study into print, with an expedited peer-review process and without seeing the surveyors’ original data, also makes no secret of his leftist politics.
Then again, maybe for some it’s the latter; Horton indicates that the question of possible fakery did not even come up in Lancet’s peer review process. This is bizarre, to say the least; fraud is not unknown in science even in non-political arenas. All the more reason to be suspicious of it here when the stakes are so high and the motivation so strong, and to put into place simple safeguards against it when peer-reviewing the work.
War is bad enough without exaggerating the resultant death toll. But this embellishment has an old lineage, although science has not usually been involved. Joseph Goebbels knew only too well the value of playing on the number of German casualties from Allied bombings, in an attempt to even the score between the Nazis and the Allies in the minds of the tender-hearted, when he greatly inflated the already-numerous deaths in Dresden’s firestorm during World War II. It is a testament to his propaganda genius—and to the truth of Churchill’s adage that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on—that most people still believe Goebbel’s propaganda today, and that correctives such as historian Frederick Taylor’s estimable 2004 book on the subject have come so late and reached so few people.
Politicization of science is a big problem of our time in many fields, from global warming to environment and history. It undermines the very aim of science as objective knowlege. One should decide for himself what career to pursue – to be a scientist or political activist, and understand that these two position are incompatible.
Exactly and precisely right, Sergey, and well put: they are incompatible.
The Lancet study remains the most thoroughly and professionally developed accounting of civilian deaths in Iraq.
While I am certainly persuaded that there may well have been flaws in the methodology, it is unassailably the most rational starting point for discussions about mortality rates in the Iraq war.
Since the study was first released and then when it was updated with additional data, many in the pro-war community tellingly dismissed it out of hand. The authors have on numerous occasions defended the methodology, though I lack the statistical expertise to determine for myself whether their defense was successful.
Unless and until pro-war advocates or more objective researchers present alternative data, we have little choice but to use the Lancet study as the best source on this subject.
Jack Schwager needs to be deprogrammed.
It seems many secular or left-of-center scientists go into some funk wherein they believe they are separate from their emotion and other human conditions. They dive so far into research that they think they are a pure tool of logic and reason. Being blind to one’s nature does not only allow that to leak into all one does, it makes it probable. And worse, it becomes the controlling factor.
There are many fine scientists. There are even great secular scientists. But the type which try to exclude emotion and the certainty that they cannot know, the ones who don’t understand science is only serving to ask questions and find very limited practical applications, and the ones which cannot see the means but only the end, those types tend to give real scientists a bad name. Although, science seems to be in a difficult time. The opposing sides are those who wish to consider science a method of study and those who wish to impose what little we know on a less educated public. The media is not on the right side, here, as elsewhere.
Revisionism has struck all facets of academia and culture now. However, deep down, I see it pushing extra hard because it fears it’s time is over. I have some notion that this might be true. But, I am not holding my breath. Wounded, even dying, animals can be quite dangerous.
“to be a scientist or political activist, and understand that these two position are incompatible.” Or theism.
“though I lack the statistical expertise to determine for myself whether their defense was successful.”
To use a phrase I like “Who woulda thunk it!”\
I, however, *do* have enough background to tell you they are full of it. There was almost nothing in the whole study that was done correctly, in fact there was almost nothing in the study that wasn’t done grossly incorrect. Statistics are easy to manipulate even when done correctly, anyone who has done much in the field normally recognises this (in fact, for many studies it is nearly impossible to remove all the bias). However, in this case, the methodology is so bad that even someone with a high school understanding of statistics should see it (and most did).
Of course, don’t let that get in the way of it being the best starting point. The study wasn’t remotely aimed at people who could read statistics anyway. It was aimed at people who had a need for the casualty figures to be high and would defend them to their last breath. In the end only the True Believers quote it, even a large portion of the Believers know it is bad though they may say that even if it is 100% off then it is still a large number. Of course, see Mitch Snyders account of over 3 million homeless to realize that a poorly done “study” can even be off by a factor of 10 or more (the homeless study was of the same ilk – aimed at the True Believers and anybody with any remote understanding of statistics saw instant BS).
“…many in the pro-war community tellingly dismissed it out of hand.”
Because it didn’t pass the smell test. You know, that step your math teacher tells you to do right after you’ve plugged in all the numbers in your equation and got the answer out? You’re supposed to ask yourself, does it make *sense* that my answer is that the car travels 1485 miles an hour?
The simple fact that the numbers given were so flagrantly out of line with any other numbers from any other group should have raised flags with everyone. Not just war supporters.
It’s reasonable to consider that deaths may not be accurately reported in war-time. The question of, “so where are the wounded that should occur in even far greater numbers?” isn’t so easily dismissed.
The fact that the margin of error originally reported was outrageous also contributes… does anyone happen to remember off hand what they were?… it was like saying, “Your salary is in a range between 20K and 300K a year so we’re going to use the number $170K… good with you?”
So, yeah, out of hand rejection? I’ll accept that charge.
The sad thing is that people hears anti-western propaganda from the likes of the Lancet, and it fills the template, the agenda, and NO MORE ABOUT IT SHALL BE HEARD.
I was so happy to see indepth analysis of the bogus Lancet study. Johns Hopkins has taken a credibility hit, also.
An uncommented aspect is that the vast majority of U.S. media ran with the Lancet study, without caveat, three weeks before the 2006 midterm election.
For me, the smell test partly came down to: where were the graves? Where were the incidents of large numbers of people being killed?
650,000 dead/42 months
= 10,714 dead per month
= 345 dead per day (day after day after day after day).
Where were the graves and the atrocities?
An uncommented aspect is that the vast majority of U.S. media ran with the Lancet study, without caveat, three weeks before the 2006 midterm election.
To use Mitsu’s methodology, so long as you have more than one media instance that reports on an event consistent with other media reports, the event in question should be considered as being what was reported.
Unless and until pro-war advocates or more objective researchers present alternative data, we have little choice but to use the Lancet study as the best source on this subject.
OK, here you go. I asked my friends, all Ph.D.s in the physical sciences, if they knew any Iraqis killed in Iraq, and no one said they did.
So, in fact, no Iraqis were killed, not a one. We have little choice but to accept my study, methinks.
Sheesh.
we have little choice but to use the Lancet study as the best source on this subject.
So what you’re saying, John, is that dead Iraqis are good for your side–the more the better!
I think if you added up all the estimates of the sanctions and the war, there are no Iraqis left!
All the Iraqis are already dead from the sanctions, indiscriminate bombing, torture, war crimes and “our trigger happy boys”….
Next time I hear about Iraqis killed by car bombs, suicide bombs, infant bombs, market bombs, IED, VBIED, Camelborne IED and Blackwater, I’ll be sure to cite the updated Lancet study:
“That can’t be true, The Lancet study shows there is no one left to kill!”
The Lancet study was from the beginning suspect, to my mind — but this study was questioned by many in the scientific community as soon as it came out. In fact, even in the liberal circles I frequent, many people would quote the Lancet study with caveats that the numbers were not corroborated and seemed in conflict with many other recorded sources. As a result I concluded long ago that the numbers in the Lancet study were likely far off, as have most other sober observers.
>To use Mitsu’s methodology
That’s not my methodology at all, Ymarsakar. Multiple news outlets simply reporting the same source obviously doesn’t count as corroborating independent sources. The case of the two incidents we’ve been discussing in the other topic, however, are completely different. Quite frankly I find yours and Gray’s position on those incidents quite solidly in the lunatic fringe. In both of those cases we were not merely talking about one source being repeated, but actual reporters who independently went to the scene and talked to people who were there, as well as talking to members of our own military. In the case of the Lancet study, which I’ve always found dubious, there were, for anyone following the news carefully (which I do, as you may have noticed), plenty of caveats coming out about it, and news reports about the study very quickly started to include those caveats. You, on the other hand, are claiming that the 2003 Fallujah demonstration shooting *never even occurred* despite the fact that our own military was quoted discussing the incident and did not deny the incident occurred (which presumably you think is also a fabrication by several news agencies). To me, that view would involve a massive conspiracy on the part of nearly every major news service, a number of independent reporters who went to interview people on the scene, and our own military would have to sit back and let some quotes be attributed to them that were completely fabricated, without ever bothering to issue a denial, despite the fact that that incident caused a major public relations disaster for our troops in Fallujah in 2003. That may seem plausible to you, but to me it’s loony tunes.
Unless and until pro-war advocates or more objective researchers present alternative data, we have little choice but to use the Lancet study as the best source on this subject.
I don’t believe that anyone has pointed Mr. Schwagger to direct links to alternative data , such as Iraq Body Count , an organization which has devoted much more time into this issue than the Lancet Study. There is also the Brookings Institution . The Brookings Institution bases its figures in part on United Nations data, hardly a pro-war body.
In addition to the National Journal’s debunking of the Lancet Study, there is also the Iraq Body Count’s critique of the Lancet study.
There is no need to get into a complicated statistical analysis, if you do not want to. Not everyone is a number-cruncher. Simply that organizations which have spent a LOT more time on this issue than the Lancet study have come up with vastly different results.
Seek the truth and the truth shall make you free.
Iraq Body Count isn’t a statistical model. It is simply a tally of reported deaths. As such, it doesn’t directly compare to the Lancet study, which, to my knowledge, remains the most thoroughly researched, professionally developed data attempting to assess deaths caused by the invasion of Iraq.
Similarly, the Brookings report merely presents figures acquired from the Iraqi Ministry of Health and morgues, not statistical estimates derived from mathematical models.
It is good to see, at least, that some pro-war observers admit that the high level of civilian deaths–by any and all estimates–is of concern.
Whether you choose the unabashedly less scientific approach of Brookings and Iraq Body Count, or the contentious, but statistically derived, estimates of Lancet, at least you’re admitting that tens of thousands of civilian casualties is a legitimate reason to oppose the war.
Less scientific?
So you prefer the Lancet study because it’s complicated and has bells and whistles uses equations and all that jazz and you disparage *counting* deaths?
I suppose any 3rd grader can count but it takes a PhD to get all fancy about it?
Heck, the Lancet study probably even used COMPUTERS.
And Jack? Tens of thousands of civilian casualties is not a reason to oppose the war, it’s a reason to oppose the people responsible for the overwhelming majority of those deaths.
But that’s probably too simple a concept.
at least you’re admitting that tens of thousands of civilian casualties is a legitimate reason to oppose the war.
You do realize that the sanctions on Iraq and Saddam’s regime were already killing tens of thousands of civilians, don’t you?
The war may actually have killed less people than another 12 years of sanctions….
But you’re right: in the leftist propaganda war, how can actual reported deaths compete or compare with a loopy statistical model cooked up in time for the election by a couple of dirty leftist doctors?
That’s okay, Jack, we know that Al Gore statistically won the election, don’t we? All that counting just got in the way.
And of course the statistical models prove Global Warming is anthropogenic, despite any actual, you know, evidence to the contrary.
Jesus wept.
I remember a prewar BBC report about the effects of sanctions. The reporter was talking to an Iraqi doctor about the devasting effects of not having enough medicines. When the reporter asked to see the storage room, the interviewee sheepishly said that that was not permitted. I don’t trust the answers of anyone who may have a gun pointed at his head or who may be paid to lie by an armed militiaman.
How short our memories… Nov 15, 2001… two months after 9-11.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright
Directly connecting 9-11 to Iraq… (remember that next time “the right” is accused of falsely doing so)
“The grim question of how many people have died in Iraq has sparked heated debate over the years. The controversy dates from 1995, when researchers with a Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) study in Iraq wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society, asserting that sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children.”
This, before the war… 567,000 children killed by the United States.
It’s bogus and for a variety of reasons. It’s also the main reason for Food for Oil which was immediately diverted to palaces and bank accounts by those who claimed all those children were dying.
Children died of starvation and children died for lack of weapons grade chlorine to purify their water.
As Truth so well pointed out, oil wealth meant that regional leaders did not have to take care of the people in their countries.
It really is no more complicated than that.
And 567,000 children… why don’t we remember those charges? Why are the years 1991 to 2000 a complete black-hole?
That number got the press. Later revisions downward didn’t.
“Sanctions opponents place the blame for Iraq’s increased deaths squarely on the United States and the continuing UN sanctions. Certainly the United States bears primary responsibility for the war and unrelenting sanctions.”
But we should have let sanctions work. Remember that. Sanctions were better.
Pointless, but better.
As we know, sanctions put no pressure on Saddam. Sanctions only work if people have a way to hold their government responsible. In an oil financed dictatorship this can not happen. And Saddam got around even direct personal financial impact by selling the children’s deaths to the world and getting Food for Oil out of us bleeding hearts.
War is horrible, but it’s far from the worst possible thing. Not-war is not enough to claim moral righteousness.
Failure to go to war kills people, too.
“So you prefer the Lancet study because it’s complicated and has bells and whistles uses equations and all that jazz and you disparage *counting* deaths?”
As he said, he has no real ideas of what statistics are – in fact doesn’t even know what scientific means. Since it is possible to do so with a decent level of accuracy actually counting the death is, by far, the most scientific method and we have two places that do a fairly decent job of that.
This is *exactly* like discounting counting the number of cups in your house and instead measuring the number of cups in 10% of the space and multiplying that by 10. However this poster seems to think that because it uses math that the second method is better.
Since we can simply count the actual number that is as accurate as one can get. You don’t need to calculate confidence intervals, standard deviations, make sure you choose your samples carefully, etc – however there is nearly no room to adjust the numbers to meet what you want to say.
The lancet study wanted to say something and made sure it was “peer reviewed” by those that also wanted to say something (I would be interested to see what those reviews actually said too). Once published and it was really peer reviewed (that is, read by their peers) it was almost wholly considered to be worse than worthless – and that is intentionally misleading.
There are some people in there who lost their academic careers in their field regardless of how much they temporarily became the darlings of the anti-war crowd.
I have done a lot of research in statistics, both theoretical and applied, in such fields as psychology, epidemiology and biomedical studies. My experience is that while theoretical statistics is a hard science, its application to real world data sets is always an art, very tricky and requiring absolute intellectual honesty. Statistics is a best tool of deception and self-deception, if any of many arcane procedural details are made not correctly enough. Many times I was asked to “do math” for some observational or experimental data by non-specialists in statistics, and after analysis had to tell them that their data are nonconsistent, too scarce and contradictory to any positive conclusion; all this was not evident at first glance, before many statistical checks were performed. That is rationale behind famous phrase: there are three kind of lie: plain lie, damn lie and statistics.
I must add that many widely used statistical methods still have not a rigour theoretical justification. In most cases they work, nobody knows why, but not always, and exact conditions for that are not known too. This is especially true for using them outside physics and engineering, in so called soft sciencies like sociology, psychology or epidemiology, because these data sets often violate the basic assumptions about raw data distributions needed for workability of standard statistical procedures. You can not be sure that there is no parasitic correlations, that they are not distorted by observational selection and so on.
You, on the other hand, are claiming that the 2003 Fallujah demonstration shooting *never even occurred* despite the fact that our own military was quoted discussing the incident and did not deny the incident occurred (which presumably you think is also a fabrication by several news agencies).
I’ve made comments about Haditha and Blackwater. I have not gotten into Gray’s subject of Fallujah either way. So you are going to have to stop lying about this subject, Mitsu. Or talk to Gray if you can’t drop Fallujah.
The only loony tunes in effect here is your fabrication of strawmen, Mitsu.
After claiming that there were many different reporters and networks that suddenly went to Iraq to report on Blackwater all of a sudden, you still have not provided any actual names. Do they only exist in your head?
I have no choice but to accept your methodology as consisting solely of counting media reports as they are stated to be the actual and literal truth. As opposed to a single media report, which you state you are skeptical to. But that isn’t accurate either.
I believe the Lancet study suffers from political bias and overstates civilian deaths. I also believe that the Iraq Body Count numbers, being limited to reported verifiable violent deaths probably misses the actual total number of civilian casualties due to a variety of factors … failure to report deaths in certain cases or deaths hidden in various ways. It also does not deal with wounded civilians, and while losing a limb, for example, may be preferable to losing a life, it can still negatively effect your future nevertheless. The ratio of deaths to wounds is usually more of the latter than the former, which would, using the IBC numbers, mean hundreds of thousands of civilians wounded. The real point, however, is what responsibility, if any, do we accept for these deaths and wounds. Do we simply say it was/would have been worse under Saddam and proceed to ignore them? Do we need to factor them in along with our own and Iraqi troops’ casualties as part of the cost of the war?
As certain comments in the thread make plain, political bias can and does influence how we accept or reject facts, studies and scientific consensus. There are, for example, the requisite asides that slam the international scientific consensus on global warming. No doubt Sergey can provide a link to some study that supposedly refutes all the other findings, just as I suspect there is a professor somewhere with an advanced degree in geography who still claims the earth is flat and that the NASA flights have all been faked in Hollywood. Fundamentalist Christians who go into scientific fields may well contribute to studies that purport to prove intelligent design and deny the validity of evolution. Staunch conservative Republican scientists may well contribute to scientific efforts to refute global warming or “prove” all abortions ruin the lives of the women who have them. Liberal scientists may well choose to focus on proving the link between greenhouse gases and global warming. Peer reviews, the repeatability of experiments, and so on allow better science to thrive and gain support while ideologically distorted science gets exposed and dismissed.
John Kerry has more or less admitted that he greatly exaggerated atrocities when appearing before Congress to “end the war”.And that he would do it again.This is lying in the service of a “greater good”.
This study is the same thing . But then when the Left speaks the next time are we to believe them? You know what,lying is lying. And you pay a price.Ask John Kerry.
I see Chris “wonderbuns” White is back again with his predictable “But Johnie does it tooo” complaints (you might think he’d be too afraid of sock puppets to show his head, but I guess it helps if you know whose hand is in the sock). Which, as usual, are irrelevant. Not that relevance, or even old-fashioned reason and evidence, mean much to these types when they’ve got their faith to guide them. That faith, of course, is faith in their now heavily politicized “science”, and we see it at its purest in the Schwager comments:
The Lancet study remains the most thoroughly and professionally developed accounting of civilian deaths in Iraq….
The authors have on numerous occasions defended the methodology, though I lack the statistical expertise to determine for myself whether their defense was successful.
“But I believe, oh lord-scientist, I believe!”
The real significance of this study and its now thorough debunking, in other words, reaches far beyond this one paper, and the Iraq war itself — it is what Sergey rightly identified as the politicization of science as a social or cultural practice as a whole, and involves who gets hired as a “scientist” in the first place at all, who gets tenure, who gets funding (and from whom), what kinds of “studies” get funding, who runs the major scientific journals, who gets selected to “peer-review” them, what conclusions are deemed acceptable or unacceptable, and what papers get published. Those who work as scientists in any remotely contentious field, particularly those with any chance of success, understand these political forces very well. For the rest of us — that is, those with any idea of intellectual integrity, as opposed to those content to shut their minds off as soon as they hear a phrase like “scientific consensus” — this just means having to be much more critical and skeptical over claims regarding “science” and “scientific studies” than ever before. In particular, I think we can safely dismiss out of hand any “studies” with liberal political overtones from The Lancet, as long as it’s under its current editors at least.
Chris, consensus means nothing in natural sciencies, where a single reproducible experiment or observation can trump and overturn any consensus. This imperfect criterion of truth can be used only in humanitarian or other ‘soft’ sciencies due lack of better alternatives. You still try to introduce in natural sciences a methodology from humanitarian fields with much poorer standards of objectivity. Most humanitarians suffer from the same misunderstanding of how hard science works. The same mistake of conflating ideology with science I can see in your suggestion that religious conservatives can do studies supporting intelligent design versus evolution. But intelligent design is not a scientific theory, this is ideological interpretation of theological concept, so no real biologist would accept it even as scientific hypothesis. (Darwinism also is an ideology, rather obsolete one, and now makes no positive contribution to real evolutionary studies.)
Given that my first line was “I believe the Lancet study suffers from political bias and overstates civilian deaths.” And given that I have no connection to, knowledge of or affiliation with “wonderbuns” [although it would be nice if Neo, who supposedly knows this, would confirm the fact] who has not even contributed to this thread, Sally seems to find fault with my comment. If Sally wants to argue that the rate of deaths under Saddam when compared to those related to OIF as documented by, for example, Iraq Body Count was such that fewer civilian casualties have occurred, fine. Instead she perpetuates her talent for making personal attacks and simply dismissing views she disagrees with out of hand.
I wonder what point Sally is actaully attempting to make. Oh, I see, science is politicized and any facts or consensus of opinion from the scientific community that does not confirm her own biases can therefore be dismissed. Just as Sergey has no problem with dismissing overwhelming consensus in the “soft sciences” because no permanent, truly objective, “truth” can ever be said to be proven. This is a grand position to take because it allows one to safely ignore any scientific consensus that challenge one’s own biases.
This is, of course, no different than the views of those on the left who decry the way corporate funding and political interference allowed, for example, studies proving the detrimental health effects of tobacco from being acted upon or even widely reported for years. But there I go again, complaining that Johnnie (or Georgie) does it, too. Even if the complaint is true and well documented, it should be ignored because … because… oh, yeah, because Sally and Sergey don’t like anyone to disagree with them.
political science, one of the original oxymorons…. measuring the legitimacy of waging war in any body count methodology, as quantitative analysis (i’m half joking), certainly obscures the compelling core issue(s) at stake (qualitative analysis), especially the long-term (oops, going quantitative again) ramifications… the long-term ramifications of changing the status quo in iraq are now certainly very positive for those who would have been the innocent victims of saddam’s regime otherwise, and as in the cartoon “Peanuts”, “the cosmic implications are staggering” (i believe that quote came from there…). ponder the ramifications of stopping hitler in 1933, or not going to war against him later because the body count would have been “immoral”….. like the great debate saturday nite, the shallow left never ceases to be the shallow left….
No politically fabricated consensus will ever have precedence for me before common sense, logic and empirical evidence. And now there is enough facts emerge how IGPC dismissed data of its own experts and manipulated by their opinions. It is time to be very, very sceptical even about peer-reviewed publications, because political activists in editorial boards of sometime honored scientific journals sadly compromissed their reputations. This can be said even about such journals as “Nature” and “Science”: being myself a scientific observer of a Russian Academy of Science popular journal, “Priroda”, I have seen for last several years deterioration of their editorial standards.
It is good to see, at least, that some pro-war observers admit that the high level of civilian deaths—by any and all estimates—is of concern.
I’m embarrassed to point this out, but since the enemy doesn’t wear uniforms, all the enemies we killed would also be counted as “civilians,” even if they were aiming an RPG when they were killed. So we need to distinguish between those killed who needed killing, and those who didn’t.
Chris, consensus means nothing in natural sciencies, where a single reproducible experiment or observation can trump and overturn any consensus.
Bless you, Sergey, for pointing out my repeated refrain (usually raised in the context of anthropogenic global warming). Leftists in general seem to take comfort in consensus (as befits collectivists, I guess), but dispositive data trump the consensus of any number of opinions.
speaking of sergey’s observations, check out jeff jacoby’s latest on global warming….
Br-r-r! Where did global warming go? – The Boston GlobeGlobe Columnist / January 6, 2008.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion
CW: This [?] is, of course, no different than the views of those on the left who decry the way corporate funding and political interference allowed, for example, studies proving the detrimental health effects of tobacco from being acted upon or even widely reported for years.
And what do you suppose is the referent for “This” above? Does it mean that “the views of those on the left” also dismiss “any facts or consensus of opinion from the scientific community that does not confirm [their] own biases”? Or that those lefties are also in the “grand position” of safely ignoring “any scientific consensus that challenge one’s own biases”? Well, probably CW himself doesn’t know. (It’s not disagreement I don’t like, by the way, it’s merely fatuous nonsense and/or banality, dressed up in a pompous arrogance.)
As for “I wonder what point Sally is actaully attempting to make”, a summary would simply be the need to adopt a critical attitude toward the cultural and political uses to which so much of “science” — particularly in, as Sergey again points out, the so-called “softer” or more easily politicized varieties — has been put today, and that that Lancet study so well illustrates. As opposed to the naive credulity usually encountered and expected whenever a modern-day liberal makes a “studies show” type of comment regarding one of their favored articles of faith. (For poor Chris, of course, as with so many lefties like him, the very concept of “critical attitude” is a source of wonder and confusion, as we see.)
Wow, Chris managed to indescriminately attacked:
Iraq War Supporters
Iraq Body Count
Republicans
Global Warming Heretics
Conservative Scientists
The Military
Christian Fundamentalists
Pro-lifers
Evolution Skeptics
Flat-earthers
Neocons
Neoneocon
Big Tobacco
Sergey
and Sally
In only two posts!
That’s a lot of bile and spleen for a nice Sunday Morning….
If he could only have manage to squeeze in attacks on:
Big Oil
Zionists
Walmart
Gun Owners
Fat People
and “Corporations”
He could be a Democrat speech writer!
Chris White: yes, you and wonderbuns have different IP numbers originating in different locations. Of course, this doesn’t constitute an absolute certainty that you are not the same person, since it’s possible to use proxy IPs. But it indicates it is highly likely that you are different people.
But it indicates it is highly likely that you are different people.
I’d have to see Chris White drink a glass of water while wonderbuns is posting before I’m sure….
I’m with Synova on this. I never understood a logic that devolves as follows:
a) We try to stop the Jihadis from slaughtering civilians.
b) The Jihadis slaughter civilians to impose their will.
c) Therefore, we should surrender, so that (we hope) they won’t need to slaughter civilians anymore.
d) Ergo, slaughtering civilians is a successful way for Jihadis (or Palestinians) to impose their will.
Some of us refer to this as enabling bad behavior.
But it indicates it is highly likely that you are different people.
Okay. Lacking further evidence that they’re the same, I’ll concede that it was just a coincidence that Chris White was the only commenter to be fooled by a troll with the obvious intention of soliciting agreement with rascist idiocy, and the only one, even among the contrarians, to have expressed his fear at such a feeble attempt to spook the easily stampeded.
I’m still kind of with Gray, though.
Neo, thanks for clearing up the spurious claim that I invented wonderbuns to have a convenient foil. Even if you did feel it was necessary to also point out that, absent live web cam surveillance during each posting, I might be using multiple computers in an effort to scam the neo-neocon community. Although why I’d invent a sockpuppet to argue with on this site is beyond me. There have been enough comments that make points I find to be racist, along with repeated calls for getting really tough on those whose views are to the left of Joe Liberman, to warrant me considering wonderbuns to be offering a perfectly believable right wing view, rather than assuming them to be a leftist provocateur. Still, while we’re at it, we perhaps we should consider the possibility that not only are Sergey or Gray and Sally the same individual posting under different screen names, but that all of the posters here who share similar views could conceivably be from one very troubled individual with time on his hands and access to multiple computers. Still, call me naive, but I’ll go with the simpler idea that they are each single, discrete individuals.
Let’s recap shall we? I don’t accept the Lancet figures. I do accept the IBC figures with the caveat that, since they do not deal with the wounded and since some additional deaths might well be expected to remain unaccounted for due to a variety of reasons, this number is probably somewhat lower than the actual figure. Saddam’s regime extracted a high enough death toll that some comparison might be made between projected civilian casualties under Saddam and those under OIF … for whatever that might be worth. It is certainly going to be pretty ‘soft’ science and subject to all sorts of political spin. Do we blame all deaths of children during the sanctions’ years on Saddam or the U.S. or the U.N.? Do we use some fancy computer modeling and attribute 47.39% to Saddam, 25.83% to the U.N. and 26.77% to the U.S. and argue over that last 0.01%? Does it really matter?
The real issue would seem to be how the impact on civilians should be considered when arguing for or against whether the invasion is achieving its goals. Which in turn requires some ideas about what those goals are. If more Iraqi citizens end up believing that their lives have been improved and made safer, freer and better by OIF, then we will no doubt have gained something. If we see a new generation turn into jihadis because they want revenge for the deaths of family and friends and the disruption to their lives caused by OIF, then we will have lost something. If we wish to encourage the former and avoid the latter, it makes sense that we must recognize and deal with the fact of civilian deaths rather than ignore them because we don’t like the Lancet for politicizing the issue by inflating the numbers.
As for the developing alternative line in this thread about Global Warming, nearly every piece I’ve read supposedly debunking it and our contribution to it consists mainly of anecdotal references to snow storms and includes a line like this one from the Jacoby op-ed piece, “Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development …” Now, this begs the question of who benefits and who loses from status quo economic development. Just as it offers only exceedingly soft science to “prove” the case that a move from fossil fuels would retard economic development … except for Big Oil, Walmart, multinational corporations and fat gun owning Zionists. Sorry, I just had to give Gray (or is it really Sally?) what s/he expects.
Neo,
You wrote (quoting Churchill):
…a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on…
When I read that I was stopped for a moment because I have always thought Churchill said:
…a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on…
and when I did a quick Google search, I found that while both these versions are floating about the Web, in some cases the truth is trying to get its trousers on, and one individual even attributes the saying to Arthur Conan Doyle!
Perhaps we should query the Lancet.
Jamie Irons
According to their website, Iraq Body Count’s methodology includes a survey of what they consider reputable media sources – both Arab and Western, as well as surveys of hospitals and morgues.
Iraq Body Count has been publishing their work, in a transparent fashion, ongoingly from the beginning.
The Lancet study remains the most thoroughly and professionally developed accounting of civilian deaths in Iraq.
My, what big words you use in that baseless assertion. As I understand it, the Lancet study wasn’t even peer reviewed, it was rushed into print for the 2004 election. And the casualty figures were clearly ridiculous for the reasons Neo outlined. Nor, as she points out, is she alone in her position, nor is criticism confined to the right side of the political spectrum. My rule of thumb is that the Left always lies. Look at all those wonderful production figures claimed for the unlamented USSR, figures even touted by such deluded economists as Galbraith. And how big was the USSR economy at the time of collapse? About the size of New Jersey’s. It may seem unseemly to bring up these past transgressions, but any figures published by a political movement with a history of pathological lying has got to be viewed with suspicion.
there is another red flag overlooked.
The UKTimes article that first questioned the data estimated that given the number of interviews the time billed for the employees and the number of people conducting interviews that each interview took 15 minutes.
Here in the Philippines, you wouldn’t get past the initial greeting phase in 15 minutes, let alone get a lot of intimate questions answered and find where you had stashed the death certificates.
And I understand traditional Arabs are even more courteous than Pinoys
concerning chris white’s response about global warming, i’m not sure we read the same article which i alluded to, then there are the ramifications of the english court ruling on 9 significant problems with al bore’s film, and there is a recent story by Insight, on one of the latest “studies”, for what it’s worth, a little piece taken from the Insight story:
“…. The new report–written by David Douglass at the University of Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia–was published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society. The report examined tropospheric temperature trends and sought to reconcile them with the best available data.
“Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean,” said the report. “In layers near 5 km, the modeled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modeled and observed trends have opposite signs.”
The scientists said the pattern of warming predicted by the Greenhouse model does not match climate observations. They said the data suggested that the greenhouse effect was exaggerated and did not play a major role in climate change.”
oh well, just another unusual snow storm of no probable consequence; i should understand by now that the science concerning this is in, a done deal, and there is nothing more left to do but let the al bore crowd dictate the course of remediation….. studies, data, political agendas, left wingers with a propensity toward exaggeration, lies by omission, and downright lies…. game: which dimocrats were beating the drums for ten years before 2003 about the dangers of wmd and saddam’s regime?
Here’s an interesting analysis of Al Qaeda’s methods discussed in the ruthless thread.
Link
He who controls the capital controls the history. He who controls Baghdad, controls the Persian and Islamic empires.
This also explains the disagreement between Mitsu and I over whether the media is an arm of the enemy propaganda apparatus. A couple of strategic analysts differ for me compared to Mitsu over what AQ was or was not doing and why.
The analysis article is also not very nice on Democrats.
To make a long story short, Al Qaeda’s tactics subordinated to their media strategy did indeed have a chance to work. It was not inevitable as some think that ruthless terrorist tactics will always bring about the downfall of the terrorists. Nor are the terrorists too dumb to realize that their killing spree has negative consequences. Underestimating the enemy and believing that things will be a certain way, provides nothing but defeat.
The article in question is a retroactive analysis. It is okay to report how AQ’s strategy about allying with Democrats backfired. But such was never inevitable.
In Vietnam, their strategy succeded, if only just. In Iraq, their strategy failed and they will need to come up with a different plan. Neither would Rumsfeld or Bush’s strategy of winning over the loyalty of Iraqis like some feudal lord have worked without Petraeus and the new COIn manual written by many talented and wise military scholars.
Sure, the terrorists might go kaput like the VietCong did in Tet, but to AQ it is worth it to win. The terrorists don’t need to win by staying alive or loved at the end of the game. We do.
It is telling that the issue of global warming is tied in the minds of those whose comments indicate their disbelief in the phenomenon with Al Gore or the Democrats or the nanny state when they dispute the scientific consensus regarding it. Then there are those who start by saying they don’t think there is global warming … but if there IS global warming then it must be the result of solar flares … or volcanoes … or simply part of the planet’s regular climate cycle … humanity’s century of fossil fuel burning can’t have anything to do with it. In short, they are so focused on the political (or economic) implications, which they seem to think will gore their own ox, that to move on to plausible ways of reversing, moderating or preparing for the negative effects cannot be entertained.
To take one of the more dramatic observable signs that pertain to the issue, what do those who deny global warming make of the dramatic change in summer sea ice coverage in the Arctic or the loss of glaciers around the planet? Are these not observable, measurable, facts that are explainable through many of the global warming models being offered by those who study and believe in global warming? Perhaps the charge will be that Al Gore is filming a sequel and all the ice at the Pole and in those glaciers melted due to the hot lights used in filming.
I’m sure that Neo can post a future entry on global warming, but for now let’s return to the actual topic at hand, the Lancet casualties figures. Regardless of whether one considers the Lancet figures politicized and overstated (as I do) there are civilian deaths and wounds being caused, directly or indirectly, by OIF. Many are the result of insurgents, AQI, sectarian militias and a general rise in lawlessness in certain areas. Others are the result of U.S. troops or private security contractors occurring as collateral damage or through mistaken identification of civilians as combatants. How well or poorly we recognize and deal with these civilian casualties will have a major effect on our long-term interests. If we are seen, rightly or wrongly, as being cavalier and callus about them … if we’re seen as having a ‘shoot first, ask questions later” or a “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” approach … we sow the seeds for major blowback troubles in the future.
Chris:
Mount Pinatubo and Mount St. Helens put more greenhouse crud in the atmosphere in two events than humans have in the last 20 years. The fact is, the science involved is much more complex than the models can handle. I work with environmental scientists on a daily basis; there is no consensus and NOBODY knows for sure what’s really going on. We don’t have enough concrete historical data on which to base any modeling of future events. There’s just NO WAY that current models hold up after about 5 years in the “future.”
Should we husband the environment responsibly? Yes. Should we be concerned about human effects on the global ecology? Yes. Should we destroy the global economy by making unreasonable “carbon reduction” demands and policy to satisfy an unreliable and unknowable “science”?
No.
If we are seen, rightly or wrongly, as being cavalier and callus about them … if we’re seen as having a ’shoot first, ask questions later” or a “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” approach … we sow the seeds for major blowback troubles in the future.
We sow the seeds for a major blowback by being wrongly seen as cavalier and callus?
Not everything of a blowback nature in war is because of your faults, Chris. Some of that goes to the enemy too, you know.
Let me be brief: It is better to be free and callus than to “submit.”
You have to laugh, don’t you? CW starts off merely clogging up the comments with trite observations that even a schoolboy would find embarrassing. But when that fails to get a response, understandably, he tries to hijack the thread altogether with repeated sneers on a completely different hot-button topic, such as “global warming”. And then, no doubt because his earlier comment was ignored, for good measure he simply repeats himself, dismissing the original post on the politicized misuse of scientific communication, naturally, in favor of yet another reiteration of the blinding insight that there are in fact some “civilian” casualties in Iraq, and how it would be nicer if there weren’t. Wow.
Chris, once again, let me make my earlier point another way: how many military casualties did the Iraqis suffer?
Answer: none, because every one of the insurgents is a civilian (i.e., not a member of the Iraqi Army).
So whether the number of dead Iraqis is 60,000 or the ridiculously high 600,000 of the Lancet study is irrelevant. If every one of those civilian casualties was in fact an insurgent, I for one say, “Great!”
The argument should therefore turn on the proportion of combatant-types. Merely citing deaths of “civilians” invites the conclusion that all the people we’re talking were grandmothers shopping in the markets, children flying kites, etc. and overlooks those who were aiming an RPG when sent to collect their 72 virgins.
Is the absolute casualty count the only issue? What about the fact that 90% of the Iraqi casuaties are the result of INSURGENT action?
Chris White: If you ever want to see what I’ve written on a certain topic (for example, global warming) just type it into the “search” function of this blog on the right sidebar. If you do that, you’ll see that, among other things, I’ve written this fairly lengthy piece and this one.
Did anyone change their 2004 vote based on this study? I sure didn’t.
Scientific rigor or lack thereof aside, it failed in its goal.
The “create more terrorists” argument is logical enough, it just isn’t that simple.
For years now we’ve been hammered with the claim that our presence is creating more terrorists and never has a word been said that Al Qaida’s actions are in any way relevant.
Yet, objectively, what we’ve seen on the ground, and from the very *beginning*, is that locals resent us far less than we’re told they ought to. Not love us, that’s not what I said, but motivated to rise up and kill themselves to get us out? No. Not often and certainly not over the longer term when tribal alliances with Al Qaida against a common enemy have become violent oppressions and the blow-back hasn’t been toward *us*, but toward Al Qaida.
“Now, this begs the question of who benefits and who loses from status quo economic development. Just as it offers only exceedingly soft science to “prove” the case that a move from fossil fuels would retard economic development …”
Chris White
I agree: to hell with Big Oil and Big Coal, we need to go much more nuclear asap. To equal France in ratio of nuclear plants to populace, we need 200 more.
But in the meantime, Chris, surely you know that “soft science” China has decided that going full-throttle ahead with the construction of coal-fired electrictity plants to promote its retarded economic development is its solution to “climate change” – deciding, in effect, that not producing massive amounts of fossil fuel CO2 in this way would create more of a disaster to itself and citizens than producing it.
As a result, China has already taken the lead in fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and is still constructing one coal-fired plant at a rate of every 5-7 days, which will continue for about the next 7 years.
If you care about civilians and blowback, you might want to actually consider what will likely happen to civilians if underdeveloped countries are prevented from pursuing the “status-quo” fossil fuel energy development dependence which you disparage – just as China has considered it – and what the other side-effects might be to the rest of the World if the underdeveloped don’t develop.
Likewise, you apparently also oppose the “staus quo” partly because you have some kind of visceral dislike for Wal Mart [peace be upon it] and other Big Corporations=Marx’s “Big Industry”? Perhaps you might want to consider what Communism’s unscientific method did to the wellbeing of “civilians”, and what unscientific Marxist propaganda has done to you.
At the same time, you also must know that the Kyoto Protocols do exclude countries containing 5 billion of the Earth’s 6.5 billion people from having to follow them, so that the Protocols virtually can’t possibly work on a World-wide basis to stop net increases in fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The Protocols haven’t even worked where they’ve been applied in Europe.
And this particular major ipcc Protocol exclusion all by itself casts considerable doubt upon the ipcc’s own basic conclusions themselves: it looks like the ipcc doesn’t even believe its own disasterized conclusions, or else wants to bring about the allegedly disasterous fossil fuel CO2 emission increase it says it wants to avoid.
You might also want to wonder why the ipcc, according to its own statement, intentionally does not consider at all the “costs” of its alleged cure to its alleged disease.
Pre-scientific ages excluded, when has any of this kind of action ever been considered “scientific”, and why would anyone think it would benefit very many “civilians”, whether they are in developed or underdeveloped countries?
From the linked article, one of the more telling passages:
“The terrorized Bosnian populace related tales of brutality so appalling that the visiting Americans dismissed them as absurd rumors: Croatian guerrillas were buying castration devices from the Germans to use on Bosnian men; Serbian snipers were shooting children in the legs and using them as “bait” to bring their parents within range.
In pursuit of an accurate picture, the U.S. health officials toured a hospital in Sarajevo. In the surgical ward, they saw many children in post-operative recovery — from bullet wounds in their legs. The “absurd” urban myths, apparently, had some truth to them. In the face of such exceptional horror, one of the Americans — Les Roberts — experienced an epiphany.”
Anyone dumb enough to go into a sectarian war zone and think that people aren’t doing horrible things to one another is also going to be stupid enough to think that throwing good science under the bus of good intentions is a good idea.
Well, we all know what the road to hell is paved with, don’t we.
Also from the link:
“Roberts already believed that jihadi attacks were, in part, driven by the international image of the United States. “The greatest threat to U.S. national security [is] the image that the United States is a violator of international laws and order and that there is no means other than violence to curb it,” Roberts wrote in a July 2005 article for Tirman’s center. When NJ asked Roberts about the risk that his estimate would incite more violence, his confidence seemed to waver for the only time during the interview. “This area of study is a minefield,” he said. “The people you are talking about are the same kind of people who deny the Holocaust.” Does it give him qualms that some of those people use his study to recruit suicide bombers? “It does,” he replied after a pause. “My guess is that I’ve provided data that can be narrowly cited to incite hatred. On the other hand, I think it’s worse to have our leaders downplaying the level of violence.”
Personally, I think he’s got blood on his hands. Apparently didn’t even think things this far through before running ahead with his propaganda.
As for the assertion that, since it’s scientific, it deserves some credence- When the co-author of the earlier study steps back from supporting his former co-authors on their later study, you can really smell the stinking fish.
Of course, some simple math told me that when the study came out.
Iraq: 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.) per CIA world factbook.
26,783,383/655,000=40.89
So if one takes the study at it’s word, one out of every 41 Iraqis had been killed within the last four years. (at the time of the study) Since we know that the violence isn’t uniform, that would imply that in some areas it would be far worse. You’d be seeing towns whose entire populations have been decimated. Imagine one out of every forty of your acquaintances being gone. No way would that be unreported in the MSM, or for that matter, anything less than obvious. You wouldn’t need a survey to tell you things were that bad.
It’s pretty obvious that some commenters here didn’t even read the linked article.
Ooops italics off.
It’s pretty obvious that some commenters here didn’t even read the linked article.
Exactly.
Eso es.
When one defends the Lancet study on the basis of its being “scientific,” when in fact the National Journal and the IBC rebuttals point out some serious problems with the Lancet study in following “scientific” procedures, the conclusion is obvious.
And as many commenters have already pointed out, sampling procedures are simply a short-cut for counting. Counting is always preferable.
Another nail in the coffin for the Lancet study.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/09/AR2008010902793.html?sub=AR