>This "peer reviewed study" is a piece of polemical garbage. Everybody
>is supposed to take away the bumper sticker summary, "Coalition kills
>100,000 Iraqi civilians, half of them children," without reading the
>details. It tries to use crude epidemiological models like those used
>to study disease and applies them to the conscious infliction of
>violence by human beings. The result is statistical static.
I'm usually uncomfortable about appeals to authority, but a peer-reviewed study in The Lancet is generally about as far as you can get from "polemical garbage." It's funny that accusation should come from a blog, a genre that is well known for polemical garbage ("I am betting that...," says our blogger - with techniques like that who needs peer review?).
And what is conceptually wrong with using an excess deaths technique in this case? It's not just bombs that kill people in war - it's also all the dislocations that come with war, from bad water to busted hospitals to stress.
The author thinks he's onto something with the claim that Falluja skews the sample:
>Mistake One:
>
>"A cluster sample survey was undertaken
>throughout Iraq during September, 2004"
>
>It is bad practice to use a cluster sample for a distribution known to
>be highly asymmetrical. Since all sources agree that violence in Iraq
>is highly geographically concentrated, this means a cluster sample has
>a very high chance of exaggerating the number of deaths.
The Lancet estimate of 100,000 excess deaths *excludes* Falluja <http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604174412/fulltext>:
>The risk of death was estimated to be 2·5-fold
>(95% CI 1·6-4·2) higher after the invasion when
>compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds
>of all violent deaths were reported in one
>cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude
>the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1·5-fold
>(1·1-2·3) higher after the invasion. We estimate
>that 98000 more deaths than expected
>(8000-194000) happened after the invasion
>outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier
>Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of
>death before the invasion were myocardial
>infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other
>chronic disorders whereas after the invasion
>violence was the primary cause of death. Violent
>deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33
>clusters, and were mainly attributed to
>coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly
>killed by coalition forces were women and
>children. The risk of death from violence in the
>period after the invasion was 58 times higher
>(95% CI 8·1-419) than in the period before the
>war.
And what's with this racist claptrap? "Self-reporting in third-world countries is notoriously unreliable." Iraqis are not a bunch of illiterates.
What was your point in forwarding this Michael?
Doug