Magic Statistics

Last October The Lancet published an article claiming that almost 655,000 more Iraqis had died since the US-led invasion than would have died had the invasion not occurred.  The article was immediately subjected to a barrage of criticism from around the world, and the authors promised to answer the questions and, in particular, to provide more detailed information on the methodology of the survey that formed the basis for their estimate.  Have they done so?

One academic expert on statistical survey methodology says not.  As a result, his doubts about the validity of the study are increasing.

Peter Lynn, Professor of Survey Methodology at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, has been quietly investigating and, despite several e-mails to the researchers, has been unable to get answers: “I can’t come out and say I support the paper, or say that it’s rubbish, because I haven’t been able to find out enough. But the fact that they are dragging their feet on answering my questions makes me sceptical.” Had the paper been submitted to a statistics journal instead, Professor Lynn says, it might not have survived peer review.

That final sentence makes an excellent point.  Did The Lancet’s peer reviewers possess the knowledge of technical statistics and survey methodology needed to assess the research?  After reading the article, I considered that a legitimate question.

I, along with many other statisticians, expressed serious reservations about the soundness of the survey and the reliability of the results.  That The Lancet authors appear unwilling to answer basic questions that the original article’s inadequate documentation left unanswered only diminishes what credibility they have left.  The unavoidable question now: Are they trying to hide something?

By the by, I have just received more material from other experts investigating The Lancet study, and I plan to post an item about that in the next day or two.

Previous related posts:

• “Main street bias” in Lancet study
• Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable

UPDATE (5 Dec.): The promised post is here.

Renowned choral conductor and composer of carols John Rutter has set off a broadside against "happy-clappy" modern hymns.  As far as he's concerned, they’re little better than what’s heard in supermarkets.

John Rutter, who was commissioned to write a carol for the Queen which will be performed at Sandringham on Christmas day, has branded the pop-tinged compositions "shallow and uninspiring".

The 61-year-old composer, who has singled out Shine, Jesus, Shine as one of the worst examples, is calling for a return to "great heritage" of sacred music represented by hymns such as A Mighty Fortress is Our God, We Plough the Fields and Scatter and O God, Our Help in Ages Past.

"When the keyboards and guitar come out in church, I sneak out at the back," he said. "I've heard enough to know that I'm not hearing anything that's uplifting for me.

“It’s like sugar, something that gives you a rush, but doesn’t ultimately nourish or sustain you.”

He says he’s not against musical styles derived from popular music, but hymns have to be distinctive and original.  In his view, hymns cannot be edifying if they sound like Muzak.

FWIW, I’m with Mr Rutter.  Besides the trite music, I’m frequently bothered by the lyrics of “happy-clappy” church songs: Generally, they have no theological content to speak of and, when positive teaching does appear, it’s often problematic.

Previous related post: “Out From The Deep”

A mob of 300 armed Muslims surrounded an Orthodox church in Beshasha, Ethiopia, during a midnight worship service in mid-October and forced the Christians to exit by threatening to torch the building.  Unarmed, the worshippers were defenceless as the mob set upon them.

Fifteen individuals from the church suffered severe knife wounds. Six people died as a result, two priests, two elderly women, and two men.

Two weeks later, the Ethiopian media announced that the police had arrested the leader of the massacre. However, the violence against Christians continues to steadily increase. It was only two weeks before the Beshasha massacre that another attack on Christians occurred in Jimma, Ethiopia because Muslims opposed Orthodox Christians celebrating the traditional Meskel holiday.

Anti-Christian violence in the Horn of Africa has increased since Somalia was taken over by Islamists who called for jihad against Ethiopia in particular and non-Muslims in general.

h/t: Big News Network.com - Breaking Religious News

Previous related post: Jihadists take Somalia

Sunday Times of London film critic and former cokehead Cosmo Landesman has sworn off the white powder on moral grounds.  Cocaine buyers support forces of violence and corruption in Latin America and murderous drug gangs in Britain.

[L]ast week . . . I read about Olinda Giro, 20, a Colombian who at the age of 17 lost her sight when she stepped on a landmine, planted by a cocaine cartel to protect their crops. It’s something that happens often in Colombia. In Britain in 2003 a seven-year-old girl, Toni-Ann Byfield, was shot dead by a gunman who had just killed her coke-dealing dad. A life for a few lines?

Cocaine has gone decidedly down-market since boomers made it trendy in the 1960s.  “We had no idea”, says Mr Landesman.

[W]e had no idea that one day it would spread so contagiously and wreak such devastation. People like me are being mugged so addicts can pay for a drug I once thought was cool. So in the spirit of the season of goodwill to all men I thought I might try to do a little bit of good by getting people to join me in my ethical stand to stop taking coke.

He tries to persuade four occasional-to-frequent coke-using friends to quit for both moral and prudential reasons, but it’s a hard sell.  Some are sympathetic to his arguments, but none is willing to forego the drug’s pleasures.

The risible inconsistencies and guilt-dodging of the four friends provide a few laughs along the way, nonetheless.   This one is my favourite.  A fortyish travel writer nicknamed The Nose has a wife, a young daughter, and a voracious coke habit.  In younger days, The Nose traveled through Colombia and so has first-hand knowledge of the misery cocaine has wrought.  Not only that, a cocaine gang kidnapped him and threatened his life.  But, having been there and seen that, he doesn’t care anymore.  At the same time, however, he has a keen interest in buying organic food and other righteous products.

The curious thing is that the Nose has written extensively about how we exploit the Third World and is also a keen ethical shopper. “I buy Fairtrade coffee, free-range eggs, Fairtrade bananas.”

“But how can you go on about ethical consumerism and fair trade,” I ask, “and still purchase cocaine? You’re saving chickens and killing humans!”

“It’s easy to be ethical when you’re at a supermarket with a trolley,” says the Nose. “There you are making rational choices; a nightclub at midnight is different.”

So, he acknowledges his coke use is irrational.  That’s pretty close to admitting he’s an addict.

Kudos to Mr Landesman for his valiant, if futile, efforts to make the world a better place.  Persuading addicts to give up their self-destructive habits can be a frustrating task.

Previous related posts:

• Cocaine users at risk of contracting Hepatitis C
• Cocaine-using celebs help destabilise Colombia

A previously unknown group called the Just Swords of Islam claims credit for throwing acid in the face of an "immodestly dressed" woman in Gaza City.  "Immodest" dress apparently refers to not wearing a hijab—a headscarf.  Internet cafes and pop music also throw the Just Swords into a tizzy.

The group has issued pamphlets warning people in Gaza to toe their line or risk being attacked in public.

The warning was directed primarily against female students in a number of universities and colleges who do not cover their heads in line with Islamic tradition.

The group said its followers last week threw acid at the face of a young woman who was dressed "immodestly" in the center of Gaza City. They also destroyed a car belonging to a young man who was playing his radio tape too loudly.

Addressing female students, the group said: "We will have no mercy on any woman who violates the traditions of Islam and who also hang out in Internet cafes."

The group says its members fired rocket-propelled grenades at internet cafes and music shops.  It doesn’t like those particular business establishments because they’re too entertaining.

It said the places were targeted because they
were "distracting an entire generation of Palestinians from their duty to worship [Alla] and jihad so that they could serve their Zionist masters and the Crusaders.

What next: satellite television services and video rental shops?

Palestinians in Gaza have mixed reactions to the Just Swords’ campaign: Many agree with their goals, but not their tactics.

h/t: Dhimmi Watch

Previous related posts:

• Christians being driven from the Holy Land
• Palestinian Christians have lost hope
• Palestinian Christian women wearing headscarves

Scientists claim the great Pyramids of ancient Egypt were partially built with concrete, but historians and archaeologists aren’t buying it.

Materials scientists who have examined fragments from the great pyramids maintain that stones at the upper levels were made from limestone that had been softened into paste and hauled up to the construction site in bags, where they were cast into two-tonne blocks.

The research, by materials scientists from national institutions, adds fuel to a theory that the pharaohs’ craftsmen had enough skill and materials at hand to cast the two-tonne limestone blocks that dress the Cheops and other Pyramids.
. . .
The stones, say the historians and archeologists, were all carved from nearby quarries, heaved up huge ramps and set in place by armies of workers. Some dissenters say that levers or pulleys were used, even though the wheel had not been invented at that time.

Until recently it was hard for geologists to distinguish between natural limestone and the kind that would have been made by reconstituting liquefied lime.

But according to Professor Gilles Hug, of the French National Aerospace Research Agency (Onera), and Professor Michel Barsoum, of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the covering of the great Pyramids at Giza consists of two types of stone: one from the quarries and one man-made.

This new evidence corroborates a theory first posited by French chemist Joseph Davidovits in the late 1970s.  Egyptologists are still not convinced, however.

The concrete scientists say that they could undertake a decisive test of their theory if Egypt grants access to larger samples.

Click here for an artist’s rendering of the construction process using limestone-based concrete, along with several flakier ideas of how the Pyramids came into existence.

The South Dakota legislature enacted a law requiring the “informed consent” of women considering abortion before the procedure may be carried out.  The information to be provided by doctors must include a statement that abortion kills a unique and separate human being.  A legal challenge by Planned Parenthood ensued, and a federal district court judge blocked enforcement of the law as an improper insertion of politics into factual information about abortion and its risks.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has now upheld the lower-court decision, which said in part:

"[T]he South Dakota statute requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state's viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue — that is, whether a fetus is a human being."

Scientific ignorance rules at the US 8th Circuit.  As far as medicine and science go, there’s nothing “unsettled” about that “issue”.  The dissenting judge nails it:

In his dissent at the 8th Circuit, Judge Raymond Gruender got right to the palpable point. He noted that this embattled law goes on to define "a whole, separate unique living being" as an "individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being." That, said the judge, "is nothing but an unremarkable tautology (needless repetition). It is simply a restatement of the definition of 'abortion.' "

Quoting from the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the judge continued, "Abortion is defined as 'the termination of a pregnancy… resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.' " And that departed fetus or embryo, whatever you call it, is unmistakably "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens."

The court’s decision is ludicrously unscientific.  Is this an example of what happens when, as many Americans are concerned, not enough good science is taught in high school?  Never mind the hoofaraw over Intelligent Design, people: this is elementary biology.

Of course, foetuses borne by human mothers are human beings.  What other kind of being could they possibly be?  Women do not give birth to kittens or puppies.

h/t: Christianity Today Weblog

Previous related posts:

• Abortion: Risk factor for “major depressive illness”
• Abortion: Risk factor for breast cancer
•  “Mary Doe” says lawyer lied, pushed her to challenge abortion law
• Another Democratic politician goes pro-abortion

The collect for today, the 1st Sunday in Advent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:8-14
The Gospel: St Matthew 21:1-13