Reporting this week in the online edition of The Lancet, a leading British medical journal, the researchers estimated that 654,000 more Iraqis died of various causes after the invasion than would have died in a comparable period before.
The Lancet, of course, is the same journal that published a similarly flawed study on the eve of the last presidential election in a transparent attempt to influence the outcome (to no avail, fortunately). That study claimed that more than 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion.
It's bad enough that a once reputable journal would publish methodologically flawed studies as if they were methodologically sound. Publishing politically motivated, methodologically flawed studies is even worse. And the fact that it would habitually do so just before elections are held in America in an effort to ensure that Democrats win is indicative of a deep pathology on the part of the journal editors. They'd be much better off publishing a medical inquiry into Bush Derangement Syndrome. Lancet is, after all, a medical journal.
The Lancet has an even longer history of publishing inflated casualty claims from Iraq. Back when Saddam was in power, liberal outlets (including the Lancet) were also doing body counts. In an article in the Nation entitled "A hard look at sanctions in Iraq," we have this:
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.
I think this old figure might explain the new study. In fact, I can just hear the conversation that preceded it:
Lancet: Team, someone just reminded me that we once said that sanctions killed 567,000 Iraqi children. If we don't act fast, someone might credit George Bush with saving that many children now that child mortality rates in Iraq have come way down.
"Researcher:" That would be horrible! Fear not, I'm on it. Soon, I'll have a new "study" for you that beats that old figure. In fact, I guarantee that it will come in well above 600,000.
["study" conducted here]
Lancet: Whew! We did it. Now we can say that "research proves that George Bush killed more Iraqis than he saved." Thank God we got this vital information before Americans go to the polls.
8 comments:
So the Iraqi physicians and the epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health who conducted this study are all victims of Bush derangement syndrome? It seems to me that the only reliable way to determine the death toll in the chaos of Iraq is by statistical sampling. Why haven't you offered any refutation of the scientific approach used in the study? Who else has done a simliar study and come up with different numbers?
You are not the slightest bit concerned by the obvious attempt to manipulate the US election (again)? To you, it's reasonable to suppose that these are nothing more than objective scientists in search of the truth and that, by random chance, they keep releasing their wild claims just before we hold elections?
Go here to read just one of many analyses of their last attempt at this.
As you know from reading this blog, I am constantly searching for credible casualty reports from Iraq. Lancet is not one of the places to look.
In all fairness, research standards are pretty low in epidemiology and in the social sciences in general. A lot of factions trade shabby statistics either with false assurances that they have proven something, or with the mediocre excuse that they can't do any better. So I don't particularly believe this figure from the Lancet.
But I also don't disbelieve it. As TD Larkin said, these Lancet authors are the only ones who are at least trying to answer the question. The only way to find out how many Iraqis are being murdered in the anarchy of Iraq is with census estimates, and no group other than the Lancet is trying. It's a shame, because it's an important question. It wouldn't be all that expensive to do a survey that meets the standards of the US Census Bureau. It would be insignificantly cheap compared to the war itself.
As for Engram's question, I am quite concerned that there has not been nearly enough manipulation of US elections by truth-bearers. Too many voters are in the dark about the most basic factual questions; such as, for example, how many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi. Some of the world's worst elections amount to church rituals in which competing priests debate each other. I can see why they wouldn't want outside influence, but they sure as hell ought to have it!
I can also say, Engram, that you have a way of flying off the handle in response to any criticism of Bush that you perceive as unfair. THEY'RE TRYING TO MANIPULATE THE ELECTION, you say. You well know that all kinds of bogus studies get published in journals. If you really see it as a conspiracy to steal elections from American Republicans, then I would say that there are two prevalent types of "Bush Derangement Syndrome", and you've got one of them!
Except the authors of the study agree with me that the timing of their first study was designed to influence the presidential election (i.e., they acknowledged it long ago). Yet you think it's a sign that I'm suffering from a syndrome because I believe them? The timing is obviously politically motivated, and the authors themselves admit it, but you refuse to believe it.
That's a medical journal, not a political journal. You should not applaud their political antics just because they seek to damage the reputation of a president you happen not to like.
Except the authors of the study agree with me that the timing of their first study was designed to influence the presidential election (i.e., they acknowledged it long ago).
I have no opinion on that one way or the other until I know what they actually said.
Yet you think it's a sign that I'm suffering from a syndrome because I believe them?
Not so much that as that you consider it out of bounds to try to inform an election. That's part of the point of free speech, to inform the voters. Or to try to misinform them! It's the responsibility of the voters to sort through all information short of outright fraud. It might count as fraud if the study were paid for by the DNC, but I doubt anything of the sort. The authors are at worst merely wrong. To call it election fraud -- to have that come from a tenured scientist -- is indeed a form of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Besides, I don't know that the authors are wrong. When I skimmed the study today, it struck me that they were a lot more careful than a lot of estimates of deaths due to the bad guys. If they had done exactly the same study in North Korea no one would even have blinked, in fact a lot of the erstwhile critics would have praised it as slam-dunk proof. Now, that does not mean that it is really the truth. But maybe I was a little uncharitable in saying that epidemiology has low standards. Sometimes the standards are not so bad.
If I was a little uncharitable, Bush was completely uncharitable in response to this study; he was also full of !@#$. He said that the number just wasn't credible. But when a reporter asked him, okay, what is a credible number, he refused to give one. If a guy is 100% certain that your numbers is wrong, but refuses to give you his number or even a range of numbers, that means that he isn't interested in the truth.
Both studies from the Lancet made a plea for governments, or NGOs, to make authoritative surveys of deaths in Iraq. They said openly, our numbers are just an estimate, we would like to see the real truth. Bush responds to that by saying, their numbers are wrong, and they can go fly a kite with the question.
That's a medical journal, not a political journal.
Deaths due to warfare or anarchy are a perfectly valid medical question. Just because it is a medical journal, that does not mean that it stay away from political questions. It shouldn't stay away by any means, provided that those questions have serious medical content.
This is exactly what I mean when I say that democracy can go bad by becoming a church with priests who debate each other. Politicians have in the past dismissed the valid work of physicists, biologists, chemists, economists, you name it, with the accusation that they carry political agendas. Actually scientists are perfectly entitled to carry political agendas. The point is that the scientific debate should rise above the possible partisanship of its individual voices.
In other words, if you think that the Lancet study is wrong, you should do a better study yourself! If you want to time its release for the next election cycle, go right ahead!
By the way, the study is here, and I invite you to critique it point by point:
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf
Touche jim harris! Engram clearly has a version of Bush derangement syndrome where he unequivocally believes everything the man says no matter how preposterous.
The real question you should be asking Engram is why our own government doesn't tell us what the real numbers are? They don't even provide accurate counts of our own dead and wounded. These have to be tallied by outside groups (like Iraq Body Count and the icasualties site).
Iraq Body Count has an average of 36 deaths per day, yet we often hear reports of 100 a day. Just today another 60 bodies were discovered. This means the Iraq body count is probably off by a factor of 2 or 3 since many deaths likely go unreported. It's likely that many bodies are being dumped or buried in places where they won't be found. It's safe to say that the only growth industries in Iraq these days are gravedigging and casket manufacturing.
Just because some want to deny the carnage in Iraq doesn't mean it isn't happening. As citizens it's our obligation to force our government to recognize the reality of the situation and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
As I've said before, what is Bush's plan? Let's hear it! He should publish his plan on resolving Iraq's civil war and the Republicans should all run on it. Let's have a clear choice this November. How many years and how many more US dead will it take Mr. President to finish off this misadventure?
Come on now silly people, run the numbers for yourself.
600,000 Iraqi's killed over 3.5 years comes out to the outlandish total of 469 Iraqi's being killed each and every day for those 3.5 years. Where is the proof that in one month at least 14,000 Iraqi's have died? Where are all the bodies being buried?
The Lancet study is most probably flawed because the people responding to the questions are guilty of gross exaggeration.
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