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Doubts raised about Lancet study on Iraqi death toll

posted at 7:26 pm on March 4, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Not for the first time, either, but the previous challenge had to do with methodology. The new questions raise the possibility of fraud.

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 should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports…

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…

Dr [Richard] 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?…

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.”…

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.”

The Times pointedly notes that Burnham and Roberts both oppose the war. Meanwhile, one researcher advocates setting up a blog where the authors could engage with their critics and defenders. Super idea; that wouldn’t turn into a name-calling fiasco about the merits of the Bushitler’s war within five minutes or anything.

Exit question: Is this another lesson about the perils of using stringers?

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78% of statistics are made up on the spot.

lorien1973 on March 4, 2007 at 7:28 PM

This combines well with the Global Warming religionists. Truth in science is rapidly dying.

laelaps on March 4, 2007 at 7:34 PM

nice lorien1973

- The Cat

P.S. Does/Did Iraq have a death certificate system?

MirCat on March 4, 2007 at 7:36 PM

Maybe ACORN did the field research….

rw on March 4, 2007 at 7:37 PM

Okay, great, now how many people really have died in Iraq? Will we ever know?

Savage on March 4, 2007 at 7:39 PM

What’s sad about this is that The Lancet was once a respected journal of medicine. How many institutions have prostituted themselves to the anti-war movement?

billy on March 4, 2007 at 7:39 PM

Okay, great, now how many people really have died in Iraq? Will we ever know?

We’ll never know. Is it knowable? How do you attribute deaths? If someone dies of old age between 2003 and 2007, did the war kill them? If terrorists kill 100 citizens, are those deaths equal to terrorists being killed? In order to have an accurate study, you have to know who killed who and how they died. I’d bet that the vast majority of deaths would be from insurgents/terrorists killing civilians.

lorien1973 on March 4, 2007 at 7:49 PM

I understand Dan Rather intends to show journalistic solidarity by standing behind the Lancet’s story 100%.

eeyore on March 4, 2007 at 7:53 PM

Medea Benjamin was unavailable for comment.

JammieWearingFool on March 4, 2007 at 8:11 PM

This combines well with the Global Warming religionists. Truth in science is rapidly dying.

laelaps on March 4, 2007 at 7:34 PM

Sad but true…. The guy said “…they either don’t know or they don’t care.” Or they’ve got an Axe to grind.

liquidflorian on March 4, 2007 at 8:21 PM

lorien1973 on March 4, 2007 at 7:49 PM

And now, how could anyone ever know. After Sadamm killed off what, 1.5 to 2 million of his own people, then buried thousands in mass graves, gassed some, more in not-yet-found graves, etc… there is no place, no number from which to start.
No one could even tell you accurately, how many people lived in Iraq in 2000, 2003, 2005 or now.
But the 600,000 ‘dead’ number some of the left is tossing around for the warin Iraq alone, is plain insanity.

shooter on March 4, 2007 at 8:23 PM

I wasn’t aware anyone outside of the far left even thought about the Lancet “study” anymore? I think we all know that the best estimates are 50,000 dead and I have a feeling (admittedly, just a feeling) that this number is even inflated because it includes thousands (if not tens of thousands) of bad guys, and likely death by natural causes. The only people shouting 500,000 or 600,000 thousand are idiot anti-war lefties who base it entirely on hearing that headline a few months ago, which was all the study was intended to do…

Hasn’t everyone figured out how the left and the media works yet? It doesn’t matter if the story is true, if the claim hurts Bush/GOP/America/Business/Christians the media will play up the claim in headlines, then when the claim is shown to be garbage, the media moves on to the next claim and doesn’t rush out and start tossing up headline after headline correcting the record.

Anyway, I’m just kind of surprised to see that anyone even mentions this Lancet study. Aren’t these the guys who pulled out the 100,000 figure before the 2004 election and admitted doing it for political reasons?

(Somewhere right now, employees of the Associated Press and the rest of the establishment media are frantically trying to figure out a new (or recycled with new wording to make it seem new) “scandal” to pin on the President so that they don’t have to report on this…. What will be the headline in a few days? Bush arrested people after their phone calls were unconstitionally listened to, and it turns out they are registered Democrats!? Or will it be that Bush is issuing orders to Gitmo guards to torture detainees? Perhaps recycle stories along these lines that seem to pop up every few months with no new information, but intended to make them sound new, when everything is old and above the fold. Wait! I’ve got it! The ACLU has sued and more Abu Ghraib photos are on the way! That’s it!)

RightWinged on March 4, 2007 at 8:28 PM

Incredible! This quote alone tells us much:

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. “The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,”

It really goes to show just how far some organizations will go to deceive as many people as possible in support of their agenda.

thedecider on March 4, 2007 at 8:39 PM

But the 600,000 ‘dead’ number some of the left is tossing around for the warin Iraq alone, is plain insanity.

When the study came out, I went by the CIA’s numbers and simply asked: wouldn’t someone notice if 5% of a country’s population evaporated? thats how many 600,000 was. 5% of the population. That’s 15,000,000 americans up and vanishing. Think you’d notice? Yep. I think so.

lorien1973 on March 4, 2007 at 8:41 PM

Exit question: Is this another lesson about the perils of using stringers?

No… this is obviously an attempt by Bu$hitler’s Zionist Masters to obfuscate the truth; planting the seeds of doubt by reason and scientific method. Be ever vigilant to such sorcery…

elgeneralisimo on March 4, 2007 at 9:39 PM

I can’t wait till they put this stupid Lancet abomination to pasture. It was tedious when it was first announced. You could smell politicized pseudoscience in it from the opening paragraph.

spmat on March 4, 2007 at 10:38 PM

Iraqbodycount.org has a lot of strong, convincing criticisms of Lancet:

http://iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php

In general they defend themselves against higher, more speculative body counts here:

http://iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/

Alex K on March 4, 2007 at 11:36 PM

When the Lancet study is totally discredited, what will be the apologists explanation for the faulty conclusions?

Any suggestions? “Ha cha cha chaaaaa” “I got a million of em!”

csdeven on March 5, 2007 at 12:09 AM

The strong possibility that the Iraqi doctors didn’t do what they said they would do was raised initially by Steve Sailer and readers around the time of the study’s release. Here was that post.

tommy1 on March 5, 2007 at 12:26 AM

Well, it is nice to know that I was vindicated also, when I wrote on October 18, 2006 :

I called what researchers did “CHERRY PICKING” — chosing data points to return a pre-determined result.

I also accused the authors of being leftwing shills and committing circular reasoning:

In addition, unlike other studies in the Lancet, this study does not appear to be refereed. In fact, one of the authors, Les Roberts — who is credited as being the instigator of it – is openly outspoken against the war and is openly left wing. His interview in the Socialst Worker alone ought to disqualify this study as having any validity, especially as the study itself piously and self-righteously claims it has no “conflictis of interest” — I the Lancet is expecting the public to ignore the POLITICAL PREJUDICES of the author and pretend that this isn’t a politically inspired document.

Therefore, the conclusions of this study are wrong as it is an example of circular reasoning bolstered by cherry picked data.

Professor Michael Spagat, from Royal Holloway College, University of London in the Times article mentioned above said exactly the same thhing:

“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.”

On the issue of political bias, the Times prints what should have been a red flag (it was to me) right from the very start.