----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 11:01 AM Subject: Re: Iraq civilian casualties.
> > The most important systematic problem was the selection of the nominal > death rate. There were a number of different nominal death rates > calculated for various spans of years before the US invasion. According to > Gautam, they picked one that was a low outlier. If they had picked others, > the range of excess deaths would be far lower...and would even include a > lower death rate (negative increases). Thus, a significant part of the > paper should have been an analysis of why this particular previous death > rate is considered far superior to other official estimates, as well as > cacluations of the excess deaths. One correction. They did, indeed, measure the death rate. Their measured death rate was lower than the death rate in '89 and '90. At 5 per 1000 people, it is noticably lower than the death rate of the US (8.6 per 1000). Another source is the CIA factbook, which quotes 5.66 deaths/1000. So, that problem may not be quite as critical as I thought. Its possible that changes in demographics have had an influence on the death rate. So, lets go back to another number, the excess deaths. It would make sense that hardest numbers would be the violent death numbers...they should have the strongest signal for people dying directly as a result of the conflict. We have from the Lancet report: only 21 violent deaths reported outside of the Falluja cluster. In addition, the overwhelming number of deaths in Falluja were reported in August of this year, not during the offensive in April. The distribution of these 21 violent deaths through the clusters is not given...which I think is a mistake. This could be the most obvious source of the difference between this estimate and other estimates. Also, no violent deaths under Saddam? That sound suspicious to me. But, that is not the critical factor. I think it is clear that the variability of the rate of violent deaths, and the non-random nature of the sample are sufficient to call the study's technique into serious question. Finally, if anyone else wants to give a more positive review of the technique, I'd be happy to hear it. In particular, I'd like to see how the study's coordinators ensured that the substitution of households to survey was protected against either conscious or unconscious bias by the selectors. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
