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The Lancet is a respected British Medical Journal. So, they shouldn't have any political affiliation.

And couting bodies is hard in a place like Iraq. Everyday you read about finding hundreds of bodies that had been dumped in mass graves weeks ago.

I agree, though, it can't be 100% accurate. But as a ball-park figure, it can't be that far away from the truth.



Ok. Misunderstanding on my part then. Apologies.

Edited, Oct 12th 2006 at 9:48am PDT by RedPhoenixxxxxx

Is that supposed to be "People suddenly aren't quaking in their boots when America barks."? As in, "Yay people are finally starting to stand up to big bad America!".

I'm just curious, because currently if not America having most of the juice, and making people quake in their little booties, then who? And don't give me the whole "UN or something like it" garbage, we're on our way there but not there quite yet.

I truly am curious though, if not us then who? I guess if I had to choose I might go with...maybe Brazil, maybe Australia but they would mess things up real quick. Oh...Japan, yeah I think I'd go with Japan. Any country that focuses on catholic school girl outfits I'm cool with. Or maybe that's just me focusing on their women in catholic school girl outfits, but whatever.

Atomicflea said :



Im not talking about the soldiers you dumbass. Im talking about the dimwits who sent them there under false pretences.

And when the monthly death toll in Baghdad alone is in the region of 2600, you think that the IBC count of 30,000 is accurate for the whole country? For the whole duration of this war? Wake up!

Yes its civil war. But unless the plan was to go there and make the Iraqis kill each other, the whole thing is a disaster, that will haunt the west for generations.

Of course, if that was the plan, get them to kill each other, so that the good ol' boys from the US could stay and protect the uncivilised natives, then for sure its 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED".

Yes I would, they're not from my country. I'm not talking about breaking rules, I'm talking about other countries trying to enforce their rules on my country. No, no rebellion :) the stealth canoes aren't ready yet.

As for country choice if I had to choose it would be Switzerland (sp?), but I don't have to choose. As it stands no country has ultimate useable power. Invading a country that has not and does not intend to attack you is just wrong, and that's what America is doing. You just compared countries to police and the FBI, America is not the police of the world. A better comparison would be Supreme Court, America tries to set laws for the rest of the world, tell them what they can and can't do. They do not have authority over other countries as far as I'm concerned.

Oh...didn't think about the Japanese techo thingy...hmmm...now I don't know what to pick!

I think Switzeland would be best, they're probably the most laid back country. They know what's really important. Don't hurt people. Don't steal from people. Don't interfere with other peoples wishes. In that order. Those are the only really important laws, everything else just stems from that. Though if they were larger their views might change.

other sources only count dead bodies that go to hospitals and morgues, or are found by police. John Hopkins did their research with a school in Iraq, and these researchers went around in houses and places were americans normally are not allowed to go. (ex. the bad parts of places were everyone is shot) These numbers are not only the dead count in hospitals but death count in places were people are killed and left behind or hidden. i read a report on this. Its on the LA times somewhere...

Hmmm, Bush questions a study publish in Lancet, that was done by John's Hopkins School of Public Heath. It receive a very large donation from the current pubbie major of NYC so JHU was rename the school after him. So who would you think is more credible?

The school of public health, not the the university. We do have our standards here, in the city that Believes.

First off, medical publications publish medical findings from places like JHU. Their position on an issue is kinda irrelevant typically. JHU may be a prestidgeous university, but that does not automatically conver accuracy or impartiality to *every* study every single member may choose to conduct.

Well regarded universities can suffer from poorly conducted surveys just as much as not so well regarded ones.

The methodology in this survey *is* kinda weak, even just by eyeball. The kind of clustering techniques they're using are tried and true (as they say), but what they fail to mention is that they are *not* tried and true methods for determining something like death rates. They're typically used for "surveys", usually determining present tense information (ie: what percentage of a population currently suffers from a particular ailment, or voted in the last election, or own a car). Those types of clustering methods and extrapolation to a larger population, as far as I'm aware, have *never* been used to estimate something like a total death toll over a period of time in a particular place.

There are some very very obvious possibilities why the results might be horribly skewed. If you read their methodology, they essentially interview the familiy living in a location and ask them to list off the total number of people who have lived at that particular address over the time period in question who have died during that time period (with residence meaning having lived there for at least 3 months). But this does not take into account that there may be a much higher total number of people who lived at that address for at least 4 months during the total time period involved then are living there *now*. But when they extrapolate the numbers to a broader population, they're essentially taking the total number and dividing it by the number who've died (with some adjustments based on other clustering data). That's pretty clearly going to be wrong right off the bat. If the median household was 6.9 people (which it was IIRC), you can bet that's the number living there *now*. I'm pretty sure that in most of those addresses, they've had more total people who've been residents during the time period, especially when you consider the degree of turmoil the country has gone through.

They partially address this with an in-resident and out-resident rate. But don't seem to actually account for it statistically (they mention the values, but it doesn't seem to appear in their calculations). Maybe they did, but I can't see it in the numbers themselves (although admittedly, I didn't go through them with a fine toothed comb or anything).


The big issue IMO is that you're asking the individuals to account for the deaths themselves. I would assume that statistically, this will result in a *huge* amount of overlap if you were to actually survey every household instead of just the ones they did. Remember, that you're dealing with a culture where there are typically very large extended families. So that cousin that moved around between 4-5 different homes owned by different parts of the family will statisically be counted 4-5 times. That is something that is unlikely to show up in the study itself (where they did track actual death certificates and got copies of them in many cases), it *will* statistically affect the results when expanded to the entire population. You're unlikely to happen to survery two addresses owned by relatives who are both going to count the same person as a "family member who died". But that's very likely to have occured time and again nationwide. You wont see it in the survey results, but you are effectively "double counting" many people (and likely more then that).


Um. The final issue is the totally radically different result they're getting. Maybe I'm just a silly engineer and know nothing of scientific method, but usually if you get radically different numbers the first thing you check is to see what you did wrong. It seems like these guys got ludicrously high numbers and kinda went "Hey! We got high numbers that no one has seen yet. Let's publish!!!".

While there's some semi-significant variation in death toll statistics in Iraq, every single one is within a reasonable range. The lowest are in the 30-40k range, and the absolute highest place the death toll in the 120k range. That's "large", but not ridiculously so (most are in the 50k range, which is right in the middle statistically of the others). To use an unusual method of calculating the death toll, and come up with a number 5-10 times higher then any other calculation done should be a huge red flag, not that the others are all wrong, but that this one is.



So yeah. I approach these numbers with a *huge* amount of skepticism. The other calculations just can't all be that far off. You could argue that the US government's numbers are biased and wrong, or the Iraq defense ministry's numbers are wrong, or that the Iraq health ministries numbers are wrong, or that the various humanitarian groups numbers are wrong, but to have every single one of them be soo far below this? They can't *all* be that wrong. Just no way...

Now there's a surprise.



Of course they can't. Because it would imply that someone "other calculations" either don't have much of a clue of what's going on, or have vested interests in minimising the death toll.



And since they never venture out of the Green Zone, apart for some military exercise, you would have a point. How the hell would they know the civilian death toll? I have this funny memory in teh back of my brains of the US administrations aying they didn't count civilian deaths. Or they did, but wouldn't tell everyone otherwise.

Not only do they not counth them, but why would they admit to a high death toll? It's not like they need more bad news...



Yes, it doesn't get much more impartial that this band of mercenaries that have their own death squads, and the deepest interest in not making this situation appear worse than it already appears.



Wait, the same Iraqi Health ministry that ordered to stop counting the deaths? I guess that would explain the discrepency. Or maybe it's the fact they base their figures on those of Iraqi Hospitals? because we all know that when terrorists kill people, they take them straight to hospital. Mass graves? What?



Like the Iraqi Body Count that Republicans spend their time discrediting?

Well, these guys, noble as their mission might be, rely on media reports of deaths. Come on... The medi in Iraq are embedded, they don't have a clue of what is going on outside the Green Zone on a daily basis.



So a bunch of completly partial bodies that either don't count, or stop counting, or only count those that officialy make it to hospital can't be wrong? Are you kidding me?

Look, you can every individual member of the Iraqi government come and tell you that no one died, and you're going to say "It's true, they can't *all* be wrong?"

These deaths take into account all those that died as a result of the conflict. Not necessarily those shot down my a machine-gun or a suicide-bomb. It's not hard to see how 75% unemployment, lack of running water and electricity, hunger, diseases, non-existing medical services, a complete breakdown of the community, might lead to such a high death-toll.

I don't *know* how many people died, but I'll take the opinion of independent scientific people over the ones of thoe with a vested interest in the situation any day.

It was a misleading title designed to draw us in with a false sense of hope.

worked tho....