Magic Statistics

University of Toronto professor of statistics Dr Andrey Feuerverger is quoted in the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus saying that the probability is very remote (about 600 to 1) that a family other than that of Jesus would have the same names as the family buried in the tomb.  That is to say, the odds are extremely small that the tomb is not that of Jesus.  He has now posted a note at his U of T page backtracking from that claim.

It is not in the purview of statistics to conclude whether or not this tombsite is that of the New Testament family.  Any such conclusion much more rightfully belongs to the purview of biblical historical scholars who are in a much better position to assess the assumptions entering into the computations.  The role of statistics here is primarily to attempt to assess the odds of an equally (or more) ‘compelling’ cluster of names arising purely by chance under certain random sampling assumptions and under certain historical assumptions. In this respect I now believe that I should not assert any conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one of the NT family.  The interpretation of the computation should be that it is estimating the probability of there having been another family at the time living in Jerusalem whose tomb this might be, under certain specified assumptions.

He then goes to list eight specific assumptions behind the calculation and five other problems impinging on the statistical probability assessment.

This is the first assumption:

We assume that the physical facts of the case are as stated. (Note that the inscriptions on these ossuaries and the fact that they were provenanced properly do not appear to be under dispute.)

Actually, there is serious controversy about the accuracy of the transcriptions assumed by Dr Feuerverger.  New Testament scholars Ben Witherington and Richard Bauckham have argued strongly that the names inscribed on the ossuaries are not the ones provided to him for use in his calculations.

One of the other issues is also worth mentioning:

The apparent absence of `negatives' in the finding, i.e. of archeological details (other than the ones mentioned here) that would in and of themselves invalidate 'the hypothesis' or that would appear to lessen its likelihood.

Such as, for instance, the possibility that Jesus’ bones are not to be found in any earthly grave?

h/t: Matt Jones’ Random Acts of Verbiage

Previous related post: Our bulging “How not to do statistics” file just filled up and burst

When Daniel Ortega led the Sandinista military junta in charge of Nicaragua during the 1980s, he was a hero to leftists for his support of Cuba and Marxist guerilla movements in El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America.  Three months ago Mr Ortega was elected president of Nicaragua, but erstwhile Sandalistas don’t like him much anymore.  The European Union has threatened to cut off economic aid to Nicaragua.

What could have brought that on?  His government has enacted severe restrictions on abortion.

Marc Litvine, an EU liaison for Nicaragua, said that for the current EU leadership, the issue of the legality of abortion “is linked to aid programs against poverty and to the rights of women,” therefore, “we hope that the new government will be capable of opening the debate and discussing it outside the passion of the electoral season.”

In an interview published in “El Nuevo Diario” of Managua, Litvine said the EU is “concerned” about the criminalization of abortion, and he called the move by the Nicaraguan Congress to pass the law “hurried” and criticized lawmakers for what he called the lack of debate.

Commenting further on sovereign domestic issues in Nicaragua, Litvine said, “That’s where I see one of the contradictions of the new government; it claims to be progressive, very modern, and it is going backwards because for us (the pro-life law) is a step back.”

Mr Litvine revealingly equates “modern” and “progressive” with unrestricted killing of unborn children.  That’s the attitude that has brought much of Europe to the brink of demographic collapse.

Daily Telegraph leader/editorial writer Daniel Hannan finds a delicious irony in the EU’s pressuring Nicaragua to adopt a moral principle held dear by Eurocrats.

During the Iraq war, Euro-sophists kept telling us that it was not for the US to impose its values on the world and that it was up to Iraqis to decide their own future. Fair enough. So why is it that, when it comes to hectoring Africans about the death penalty, or ordering South Americans to form a supra-national bloc in mimicry of the EU, or insisting that abortion be made easier, Brussels suddenly comes over all colonialist?

If abortion is a fundamental human right, why isn’t parliamentary democracy? If the EU can demand the former in Nicaragua, why can’t the US demand the latter in Cuba?

More evidence that democracy doesn’t seem to be worth much in Brussels.

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Fourteen-year-old Asya Ahmad Muhammed stabbed and killed her uncle while he was beating her.  She has been found guilty of murder and ordered to serve five years in a juvenile detention facility.  Her lawyer has launched an appeal.

Judge Satar Sofe convicted 14-year-old Asya Ahmad Muhammad of murder at the trial’s first hearing on February 7 in Dohuk’s juvenile court. Muhammad’s defense lawyer appealed the ruling on February 17, questioning Sofe’s conclusion that the killing had been intentional.

“The court should consider Maria’s [Muhammad’s Christian name] case unintentional killing because she didn’t intend to kill her uncle,” Akram Mikhael Al-Najar told Compass.
. . .
Muhammad stabbed her paternal uncle with a kitchen knife last July when he came to her family’s kitchen utensil store on the outskirts of Dohuk and began beating her, her mother and younger brother.

Her uncle Sayeed Muhammed was Muslim, while her father Ahamd Muhammed had converted to Christianity in 1998.  Asya, her mother, and a brother were baptised in 2003.  The conversion has been a source of frequent anger and violence.

Asya Muhammad’s father, Ahmad, told Compass that his brother had previously tried to murder him five times, angered by his conversion to Christianity.

In the wake of Sayeed Muhammad’s death, Asya Muhammad’s grandparents called for her father to be killed. External mediators later convinced the grandparents that Asya Muhammad’s father had nothing to do with his brother’s death, leading the elderly couple to demand their granddaughter’s death and a large sum instead.

If her sentence is upheld, she will be the only female minor in the prison.

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The controversy isn’t going away about the study published in The Lancet last October claiming that the US-led invasion of Iraq had led to the deaths of over 650,000 Iraqis who would not have died otherwise.

More academic experts have expressed grave doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the study.  One is Prof Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway College.  He and his colleagues Neil F. Johnson, Sean Gourley, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, and Gesine Reinert have criticised the study’s methodology that selected for sampling only those residential streets crossing a main street, potentially giving rise to main street bias.  Because people living near main streets are more likely to be endangered by car bombs and gunfire, the methodology is biased toward an overestimate of the number of deaths.

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”.

Prof Spagat et al have produced the evidence.  The Lancet authors just don’t want to deal with it.

“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.”

The work of Prof Spagat and his colleagues has been the subject of two previous posts on this blog.

Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, raises a very important issue regarding the conditions under which the Lancet study’s sample survey was carried out.

[I]t 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.”

I also raised that point in my first post on the Lancet study.

[Lead author] Professor [Gilbert] 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.”

Sorry, Prof Burnham, but “about 20 minutes” doesn’t cut it.  Twenty minutes per interview means that the interview team worked over thirteen hours a day, and that’s before allowing for meal and bathroom breaks.  Add in 55C temperatures, and Prof Burnham’s claim demands documentary support.

Back in October, the Lancet authors promised to provide documentation and other information in support of their claims.  Not only have they not done so, they’ve changed their story.

Professor Burnham . . . says that the Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of “possible risks” to both interviewers and interviewees.

And he only found that out now?  Why did he not know that when the study was published?  In any case, that puts paid to any effort to discover the facts behind the Lancet study.  If independent experts cannot access and review the original survey forms and other operational documentation, it is extremely unlikely that the truth will ever be known.

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• Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable
• “Main street bias” in Lancet study
• Lancet authors slow to provide answers
• A specification of the Lancet study’s “Main street bias”