An exhaustive investigation of the methods used in the analysis of Iraqi deaths conducted in 2006 and published by The Lancet has uncovered many serious violations of accepted ethical practices and possible data fabrication.
“Mortality after the …

Similarly it is ludicrous to claim a study is invalid because of bias without even bothering to provide an estimate of the size of bias.

What’s ludicrous is thinking that a statistical analysis cannot be shown to be biased without an estimate of the amount of bias. The bias of the Lancet study cannot be estimated because the researchers have not provided a complete and unambiguous description of the methodology and have, by their own admission, either destroyed or never collected essential data necessary for such an estimate.

Your comment means that an estimate arising from a poorly designed sample, inadequate methodology, and sloppy data collection and processing would be impervious to criticism simply because the authors refuse to release information necessary for precise estimation of bias.

Be that as it may, we’ve had lots of opportunities to argue and debate. At this point, it’s clear that no one’s going to change his mind.

On that happy note, comments are closed.

It’s obvious that IBC under-estimates. The Lancet involves both positive (e.g. main street bias) and negative biases (e.g. ignoring Falluja, not counting households that are totally wiped out etc.) but despite the fact that you have no clue about the relative size of these, you arbitrarily decide which dominates. This is not good science.

I’ve done a little statistics myself (statistical mechanics, turbulence theory) and I have yet to see anything resembling a statistical argument here. You know – error estimates etc. Simply claiming that ‘the methodology is flawed’, ‘the number of samples is too small’ or ‘the confidence interval is too large’ without providing some kind of analysis is hardly a serious critique. Similarly it is ludicrous to claim a study is invalid because of bias without even bothering to provide an estimate of the size of bias.

An exact factor? I didn’t claim there was an exact factor. To pretend I did is just plain stupid.

The studies cited did not ‘just say’ there was an undercount, they reported that bias can be HUGE particularly when the level of violence is high.

Guatemala hardly had a free press, nor the coverage by reporters to the extent of Iraq. Do you imagine Montt wanted his crimes known?

The Iraqi government is hardly transparent either. In fact they continue to refuse to release figures.

The figure of 20% is a 5/1 ratio and actually confirms my point to you that you don’t really know whether the factor is 10 or just 5.

Proves nothing. I didn’t claim it was an exact factor. The factor obviously depends on circumstances, level of violence, freedom of movement, transparency, all of these factors work against the Iraq press count.

It is interesting that you pretend that the factor is just 5, when in fact is was reported to range between 2 and 20…the latter when the level of violence is high. You really should try to restrain yourself from misrepresenting what was said.

The range 2 and 20 is not inconsistent with the 2004 and 2006 Lancet article which reported deaths higher by a factor of 3 and 15 than the Iraq body count (less if we account for the fact that the Lancet counts all excess deaths (including those due to increased poverty and disease) whereas the Iraq body count reports on war related violent deaths. The higher factor of the 2006 study is also consistent with the fact that the level of violence was also found to increase.

I’m not the “pro-war crowd,” and I certainly haven’t suggested accepting the IBC figures as complete. Even the IBC doesn’t do that.

Rgeardless of how you phrase it, I judge the IBC under-estimates while Hopkins over-estimates.

Since you like “experts” so much, I will agree with Norway’s Pedersen. Have YOU read the Hopkins study? It praises Pedersen. Pedersen has said the Hopkins study certainly an over-estimate.

Finally, guesses at multiplicative factors, on the basis of other countries and situations, do little to resolve the technical flaws StatGuy and I have pointed out in the Hopkins study.

1. Guatemala hardly had a free press, nor the coverage by reporters to the extent of Iraq. Do you imagine Montt wanted his crimes known?

2. “Facility-based” methods are not the same as counting reports.

3. The figure of 20% is a 5/1 ratio and actually confirms my point to you that you don’t really know whether the factor is 10 or just 5.

4. As the Hopkins citation admits, in Bosnia the factor was less than 5.

Again, if the Hopkins study had shown an estimate of 5 x IBC ~ 250,000, it would not have been so controversial.

One problem with the Hopkins study is its lack of preofessionalism. Burnham didn’t impress by vaguely citing not-necessarily-comparable studies. Had he wanted to be professional, he would have tried to pick comparale ones and analyse the similarities and differences. He’s too obviously grinding an axe, and it’s hurt his credibility.