I find it hard to believe that anyone considers the Lancet report to have any credibility. It made big splashy headlines but was immediately refuted by just abut everyone, including those against the war.
It would not surprise me that Iraqi casualties have been under reported. It's hard to be accurate during war and for the most part especially being it is hard to tell who is a combatant and who isn't. If you run around in civilian attire and attack people you put real civilians at risk. not to mention that unless they die with a gun in their hand someone is usually there to claim my brother, dad, uncle ... was an innocent civilian. He was a nice boy, he wasn't an insurgent. Well if everyone is a nice boy who the hell is detonating IEDs and car bombs etc... Sam wrote: > Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion? > Anjana Ahuja > > The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were > published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis > one in 40 of the population had died as a result of the > American-led invasion in 2003. The vast majority of these "excess" > deaths (deaths over and above what would have been expected in the > absence of the occupation) were violent. The victims, both civilians > and combatants, had fallen prey to airstrikes, car bombs and gunfire. > > Body counts in conflict zones are assumed to be ballpark hospitals, > record offices and mortuaries rarely operate smoothly in war but > this was ten times any other estimate. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar > web-based charity that monitors news sources, put the civilian death > toll for the same period at just under 50,000, broadly similar to that > estimated by the United Nations Development Agency. > > The implication of the Lancet study, which involved Iraqi doctors > knocking on doors and asking residents about recent deaths in the > household, was that Iraqis were being killed on an horrific scale. The > controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics > have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none > regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. > Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone > calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts. > > Iraq Body Count says there is "considerable cause for scepticism" and > has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The > Lancet as supporting evidence. > > One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, an economist from Royal > Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford > University point to the possibility of "main street bias" that > people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs > and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to > exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The > Times that "there was no main street bias" and later amended their > reply to "no evidence of a main street bias". > > Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of > mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate > graph, the use of the word "casualties" to mean deaths rather than > deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths > have fallen. Using the "three-to-one rule" the idea that for every > death, there are three injuries there should be close to two million > Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital > reports. > > "The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate > supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions," contends > Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. "They > published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a > wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not > actually follow the procedures that they stated." The paper had "no > scientific standing". Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? "No." > > If you factor in politics, the heat increases. One of The Lancet > authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US > House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr > Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet is also antiwar. He says: "I > believe this paper was very thoroughly reviewed. Every piece of work > we publish is criticised and quite rightly too. No research is > perfect. The best we can do is make sure we have as open, transparent > and honest a debate as we can. Then we'll get as close to the truth as > possible. That is why I was so disappointed many politicians rejected > the findings of this paper before really thinking through the issues." > > Knocking on doors in a war zone can be a deadly thing to do. But > active surveillance going out and measuring something is regarded > as a necessary corrective to passive surveillance, which relies on > reports of deaths (and, therefore, usually produces an underestimate). > > Iraq Body Count relies on passive surveillance, counting civilian > deaths from at least two independent reports from recognised > newsgathering agencies and leading English-language newspapers ( The > Times is included). So Professor Gilbert Burnham, Dr Les Roberts and > Dr Shannon Doocy at the Centre for International Emergency, Disaster > and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, > Maryland, decided to work through Iraqi doctors, who speak the > language and know the territory. > > They drafted in Professor Riyadh Lafta, at Al Mustansiriya University > in Baghdad, as a co-author of the Lancet paper. Professor Lafta > supervised eight doctors in 47 different towns across the country. In > each town, says the paper, a main street was randomly selected, and a > residential street crossing that main street was picked at random. > > The doctors knocked on doors and asked residents how many people in > that household had died. A person needed to have been living at that > address for three months before a death for it to be included. It was > deemed too risky to ask if the dead person was a combatant or > civilian, but they did ask to see death certificates. More than nine > out of ten interviewees, the Lancet paper claims, were able to produce > death certificates. Out of 1,849 households contacted, only 15 refused > to participate. From this survey, the epidemiologists estimated the > number of Iraqis who died after the invasion as somewhere between > 393,000 and 943,000. The headline figure became 650,000, of which > 601,000 were violent deaths. Even the lowest figure would have raised > eyebrows. > > Dr Richard Garfield, an American academic who had collaborated with > the authors on an earlier study, declined to join this one because he > did not think that the risk to the interviewers was justifiable. > Together with Professor Hans Rosling and Dr Johan Von Schreeb at the > Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr Garfield wrote to The Lancet to > insist there must be a "substantial reporting error" because Burnham > et al suggest that child deaths had dropped by two thirds since the > invasion. The idea that war prevents children dying, Dr Garfield > implies, points to something amiss. > > Professor Burnham told The Times in an e-mail that he had "full > confidence in Professor Lafta and full faith in his interviewers", > although he did not directly address the drop in child mortality. Dr > Garfield also queries the high availability of death certificates. > Why, he asks, did the team not simply approach whoever was issuing > them to estimate mortality, instead of sending interviewers into a war > zone? > > Professor Rosling told The Times that interviewees may have reported > family members as dead to conceal the fact that relatives were in > hiding, had fled the country, or had joined the police or militia. > Young men can also be associated with several households (as a son, a > husband or brother), so the same death might have been reported > several times. > > Professor Rosling says that, despite e-mails, "the authors haven't > provided us with the information needed to validate what they did". He > would like to see a live blog set up for the authors and their critics > so that the matter can be clarified. > > Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of > Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in > conflict. In her letter to The Lancet, she pointed out that it was > unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 > households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: "Assuming continuous > interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes > per interview, including walking between households, obtaining > informed consent and death certificates." > > Does she think the interviews were done at all? Dr Hicks responds: > "I'm sure some interviews have been done but until they can prove it I > don't see how they could have done the study in the way they > describe." > > Professor Burnham says the doctors worked in pairs and that interviews > "took about 20 minutes". The journal Nature, however, alleged last > week that one of the Iraqi interviewers contradicts this. Dr Hicks > says: : "I have started to suspect that they [the American > researchers] don't actually know what the interviewing team did. The > fact that they can't rattle off basic information suggests they either > don't know or they don't care." > > And the corpses? Professor Burnham says that, according to reports, > mortuaries and cemeteries have run out of space. He says that the > Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of > "possible risks" to both interviewers and interviewees. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Deploy Web Applications Quickly across the enterprise with ColdFusion MX7 & Flex 2. Free Trial http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/ Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:229668 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
