----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 11:46 AM Subject: Re: 100,000 Deadâor 8,000
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:25:47 -0600, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So, let's call it 15,000 orâallowing for deaths that the press didn't > > reportâ20,000 or 25,000, maybe 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed in a > > pre-emptive war waged (according to the latest rationale) on their > behalf. > > That's a number more solidly rooted in reality than the Hopkins figureâ > > and, given that fact, no less shocking." > > > I'm baffled by this bit. How is that a number "more solidly rooted in > >reality than the Hopkins figure"? He has simply said "oh, it's > >probably a bit more than the IBC number so I'll just double that", > >there is no basis for it whatsoever. It doesn't even fall outside of > >the Hopkins CI. > > Well, lets look at another number: the number of people killed in car > accidents in the US. If one simply looks at the count in official reports, > one can get very close to the true number. If one were to use methodogy > similar to that used in the Lancet report, one could get a number that was > far off. > But IBC is not an official report, is it? I don't doubt looking at >official reports is a good way to find out US car crash fatalities. >That is not an option in Iraq however. Official tallies do not exist. But, official reports do; its in the Lancet report. Everyone who reported a death either produced a death certificate or stated that they had one. Death certificates have to be issued by someone. Look at the quotes on the battle in Fallujah. The US army is estimating the combatants killed, but stated that they would need to look at hospital and morgue figures to obtain a better number. This, combined with the existance of death certificates, indicates that some public means of identifying deaths still continues to function. The collection and cross checking of such data is, of course, more difficult than in the United States. The error bars on such a number is larger in Iraq than in the US, where it is very small indeed. But, error estimations can be made; other techniques can be cross checked. Iraq is, now, a somewhat open society. There is no indication that physicians or morgue workers who have seen heavy casualties are intimidated into keeping quiet about it by the US government. > If Kaplan believes the Lancet study is fatally flawed I'm puzzled why he would exchange one form >of handwavign for another. Its not exactly handwaving...its a technique with known potential for error. The arguement is that the error bars on this number are smaller than the error bars on the Lancet study...especially when one includes the methodology based errors. BTW, there is a tendency to consider knowledge digital: we know or we don't. Its softer than that. We can have imperfect knowledge about death rates and still know that some numbers are way out of line. >Experimental science is rooted in methodology and an understanding of the >inherent errors in methodology. Simple techniques, properly used, are far >more trustworthy than sophisticated techniques, poorly used. > But the simple techniques can't be used can they? Yes they can; its just that they don't produce the desired numbers. :-) OK, that's a bit of an overstatement. Simple techniques have larger error bars than they do in the US, but they still are better than the methodology of the Lancet study. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
