Talk:Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties
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[edit] Reporting & Empiricism
The biggest objection to the Lancet survey is that if 654,965 excess deaths occurred in 1200 days, there would be an average of 546 deaths per day. Why aren't we hearing those kinds of numbers? On the other hand, I agree that the methodology used by Lancet if done correctly should yield the correct results. The question is - was it done correctly? The first thing that came to mind is the honesty of the interviewers. From Wikipedia's article:
Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels, was quoted in an interview for Nature.com saying that Burnham's team have published "inflated" numbers that "discredit" the process of estimating death counts. "Why are they doing this?" she asks. "It's because of the elections."[34]. However, another interviewer a week later paints a more measured picture of her criticisms: "She has some methodological concerns about the paper, including the use of local people — who might have opposed the occupation — as interviewers.
Keep in mind that Robert's estimate of 1.7 million deaths in the Congo resulted in millions of dollars in aid and a U.N. Security Council resolution that all foreign armies must leave Congo. So, there certainly would be a good reason to answer dishonestly. However, I don't think it's fair to chalk it up to dishonest doctors without evidence, especially since they risked their lives in the survey. Here's another suspicious excerpt:
In the same article [58] Les Roberts has this to say about the ILCS (Jon Pederson) method of recording deaths: "His group conducted interviews about living conditions, which averaged about 82 minutes, and recorded many things. Questions about deaths were asked, and if there were any, there were a couple of follow-up questions. A) I suspect that Jon's mortality estimate was not complete. ... Jon sent interviewers back after the survey was over to the same interviewed houses and asked just about <5 [less than 5] year old deaths. The same houses reported ~50% more deaths the second time around. In our surveys, we sent medical doctors who asked primarily about deaths. Thus, I think we got more complete reporting."
If Roberts knew that households were reporting higher numbers the second time around, then didn't he suspect that his pre-invasion mortality rate was too low? There are good reasons to be critical of this survey. These next two paragraphs expose the most disturbing issues:
IBC also enumerates several "shocking implications" which would be true if the Lancet report were accurate, e.g. "Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued" and claims that these "extreme and improbable implications" and "utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas" are some of several reasons why they doubt the study's estimates. IBC states that these consequences would constitute "extreme notions".
Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times, in an interview with PBS, questioned the study based on their earlier research in Iraq, saying, "Well, we think -- the Los Angeles Times thinks these numbers are too large, depending on the extensive research we've done. Earlier this year, around June, the report was published at least in June, but the reporting was done over weeks earlier. We went to morgues, cemeteries, hospitals, health officials, and we gathered as many statistics as we could on the actual dead bodies, and the number we came up with around June was about at least 50,000. And that kind of jibed with some of the news report that were out there, the accumulation of news reports, in terms of the numbers kill. The U.N. says that there's about 3,000 a month being killed; that also fits in with our numbers and with morgue numbers. This number of 600,000 or more killed since the beginning of the war, it's way off our charts." [40], [41]
The implications of the Lancet survey are that local officials are oblivious to large-scale population decimation, a half-million unrecorded death certificates, and a huge inconsistency of the cemetery numbers. I doubt that a truly empirical survey would have raised so many inconsistencies.
Also, during the 12 years of sanctions, UNICEF reported that 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 died due to the sanctions. This would mean about 30% of the 5.5 deaths/1000/year figure would be children who died due to sanctions. If perhaps the deaths of those children were not reported, then the pre-invasion death rate would be much higher. The report states:
"The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces—with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships".
These common causes listed don't occur among children, so what of the validity of the UNICEF report? Perhaps the reason Jon Pederson sent interviewers back a second time was that he noticed households were not reporting the child deaths.
--Wicked222 23:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Uk Government source refers to the methodology as "Robust"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm - useful source MrWeeble Talk Brit tv 14:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed that this was lacking. Maybe that some good soul could update the article ? Quite essential information. 85.90.69.35
[edit] Userbox available
| Code | Result | Users | ||
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| {{User:UBX/Iraq War Lancet}} |
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Transclusions |
--One Salient Oversight 01:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Split into two articles?
I think it would be a good idea to split this into two articles, one for each study. The material for the two studies is currently largely separate, so that would not be that much work.Crust 19:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
- I disagree. Many of the criticisms and counter-criticisms are relevant to both studies. --Timeshifter 03:51, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Original study debunked?
The statistics of the original study have been alleged to be mistaken in a study submitted to Lancet by David Kane, but not yet published.[1]. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise, since the methodology was so questionable.--68.35.8.201 07:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
- Note "submitted" just means that Kane sent it to The Lancet. It does not mean that it was accepted (indeed, it hasn't been reviewed yet) or that it is necessarily correct. There's a detailed discussion -- started at Kane's request -- about whether Kane's paper is correct or not in the comment section to this Deltoid post. Kane's history on debunking Lancet is less than illustrious.Crust 22:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
- David Kane is the CEO of Kane Capital Management, a far cry from a serious university researcher. This is hardly the kind of person who does serious scientific research that get published in the Lancet. On ther other hand, a CEO is precisely the kind of person to have vested interests in the Iraq war.
- Further, what Kane has submitted is not even a "study". It is merely a comment, i.e. a minor issue. Also, "submitted" does not necessarily mean "accepted". Given Lancet's high standards, only a small fraction of submissions get accepted for publication.
- Even if this minor comment were to get published, the original authors of the Lancet casualty study can always clarify the soundness of their methodology.
- SDas 05:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Spin off second Lancet survey
I now agree with Crust that a second article is merited. See WP:SPINOFF. Back when Crust first suggested creating 2 separate articles there were still disputes occurring on a regular basis.
Plus some of the criticisms for the 2 surveys are intertwined.
Now that things have settled down a bit, I think it would be a good time to spinoff one Lancet survey from the other. The criticisms can be sufficiently untangled to place them in the correct articles. Some duplication may occur.
2 articles would allow room for some better explanations of the various points. --Timeshifter 00:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Ambiguous Wording Re: Falluja Stats Exclusion from Lancet Survey 2004
The authors described this as a conservative estimate, because it excluded the extreme statistical outlier data from Falluja. If the Falluja cluster were included, the mortality estimate would increase 2.5 fold (95% CI: 1.6 to 4.2).
The study says the following (emphasis mine):
When included, we estimate that the rate of death increase 2.5-fold after the invasion (relative risk 2.5 [95% CI 1.6-4.2]) compared with before the war.
The article prose seems it would most likely be read to mean a 2.5 times increase over the conservative estimate, rather than v. pre-invasion.
Could someone please confirm my impression of the text and understanding of the increase multipliers? —63.249.110.32 (talk) 07:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
- Or, in absence of such confirmation, I boldly edit. —63.249.110.32 (talk) 07:40, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] National Journal article
This needs some examination: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm -- SEWilco (talk) 05:24, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
