[lbo-talk] Let's review basic social science (was 'Desertion Rates')

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue May 31 13:55:51 PDT 2005


On Tue May 31 2005, Michael Pugliese quoted Shannon Love of chicagoboyz:


> http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002543.html
> October 29, 2004
> Bogus Lancet Study

Doug pretty much punched this right in the stomach. But if anyone wants to see it dissected bit by bit, another of lbo-talk's resident stats mavens, Daniel Davies, wasted several months of his life (in his words) "playing whack a mole" with "Lancet denialism." And after trying every one in the bunch, his absolute favorite buffoon, the king of the hill of idiots, with the bray and brains of a bullfrog, is . . . Shannon Love of Chicagoboyz.

Davies dismantled the particular article Michael Pug quoted here piece by piece in a post he wrote two weeks later:

http://crookedtimber.org/2004/11/11/lancet-roundup-and-literature-review

where he handles the entire collection of Lancet critiques. Love gets taken apart in a section dedicated to him entitled "The cluster sampling critique."

In general, this is about as thorough and witty an airing of the Lancet debate as anyone will ever need to read. Davies bottom line conclusion is that it's not only good science, it's thoroughly good science. And only people who say otherwise are people with no knowledge of stats and nothing but bad faith to guide them.

In fact, Daniel says the longer he studied it, the more impressed he was at how even the most arcane objections that came to him a month later were almost always treated somewhere in the article when he went back and re-read it. He came away thinking the Lancet's peer review process must be just as top notch as its reputation would lead you to believe.

About Shannon Love in general, Daniel recently said:

URL: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/23/more-lancet-denialism/

For sheer asininity and bombast, you

can't beat Shannon Love (you may remember him as the architect of the

"cluster sampling critique", and if you don't know what that is, good

luck for you), who appears to be claiming that the Lancet team told

lies on purpose in order to create propaganda for the Ba'ath party. As

Tim says, this would be libellous if it were not so obviously stupid.

Mr Love has decided to up the ante and "fisk" the whole report. I'm

afraid that I was rather rude to him in his comments thread.

For the sake of completeness, if Davies' very lengthy sum-up leaves you wanting more (in which case you really should go do that thing you're avoiding :o), it was followed by:

http://crookedtimber.org/2004/12/02/the-lancet-study-a-reply-to-her-britannic-majestys-foreign-secretary/

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/01/27/the-lancet-study-on-iraq-it-hasnt-gone-away-you-know/

and the aforementioned

URL: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/23/more-lancet-denialism/

and preceded by pieces that are internally linked.

Michael



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