The Left eats itself yet again.

Wait, you mean there is a lefty organization for whom "the Ends Justifies the Means" is NOT the motto?

That gives them some credibility. Wow.

If the author of a medical journal article has ties to, say a pharmaceutical industry or medical device supplier, the author is required to report the conflict of interest.

I would daresay the author of a medical journal article with clear political implications should disclose the political bias of the author.

It makes me happy when people on "the other side" hold their own accountable. I wish they did more of it...

Kind of like I wish the "moderate muslims" would police their own as well.

Hmm. Honest leftists are more numerous than "moderate muslims?" I think Salman Rushdie might count as both.

The drive-by media doesn't care. They're salivating now for the 3000th American casualty...

Last night I had a telephone conversation with my father. Unfortunately, politically he's slightly to the left of Kim Jong-Il. He started ranting about the Lancet report, saying the US had killed 600,000 people in Iraq, yadda yadda yadda. What could I do? It was my father. So, as usual, I expressed complete ignorance of and disinterest in all things political and tried to change the subject. Unsuccessfully. He started going on and on about impeaching Bush, etc.

You can pick your friends but you can't pick your family.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that the Lancet report has already percolated down to the masses. The fact that it's a pack of lies will go unnoticed.

They are only being honest because such a nonsensical claim makes their entire side (anti-war) look bad.

I like that.

You dumbasses. Your ridiculously inflated death count figures are full of shit.

Our ridiculously inflated body count is the correct one.

The Lancet should close it's doors forever. For Shame...

Meanwhile Arabs are killing black Africans by the 1000's in Sudan and the moonbats could care less.

#6 zombie

That's rough, because we do love our parents. In my liberal youth, I used to have the same arguments with my dad, albeit switched around. Of course, in my case, I spent my later adult life eating a lot of crow.

By the way, please let me express my complete admiration for you. We've moved down the street from my previous location, but if I can ever get covert info for you from my vantage point, you have only to ask.

According to the Lancet, 2% of Iraqis have been turned into newts by the Americans.

#6 zombie

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that the Lancet report has already percolated down to the masses. The fact that it's a pack of lies will go unnoticed.

Oddly enough, the "100,000 dead" claim by the same activists in the Lancet in 2004 were not taken very seriously, by the media or the voters, yet this far more ridiculous claim is treated as gospel by the Lamstream Media.

#12 bweep

According to the Lancet, 2% of Iraqis have been turned into newts by the Americans.

But they got better...

#12 bweep 10/16/2006 11:22AM PDT
According to the Lancet, 2% of Iraqis have been turned into newts by the Americans.

A newt? *British Accent*

Try this on for size:

"Intellectual honesty" has nothing to do with IBC's rebuttal to the Lancet article. Rather, they have enough residual cunning to realize that if the Lancet lunacy were allowed to stand, and thereafter be thoroughly discredited (as it inevitably would be), then they'd get sent to the political equivalent of Davy Jones' Locker too.

#6,

You have my deepest condolences. I'm in the same boat: my dad's a raving moonbat when it comes to Bush. I love him dearly and just have to keep reminding myself of all the nice things we've done for each other in past years. Otherwise, I'd tell him some things we'd both regret later. Y'know what I mean?

A rare case of intellectual honesty from the left.

Where is the flying pig?

OT:

Uh, speaking of fallacious medical information from people with axes to grind...

Just in time for another election, the CNN/U2/Apple pop-culture machine springs to life!

RED CAMPAIGN

Probably Airbus would be in on this one as well, if they weren't face-down in the Rhineland.

Anybody notice how the last time CNN, U2, and Apple put on the full-court press was... September 2004?

I think this may call for a reduced-size flying pig.

OT,

Well, it's official. The Norks detonated a nuclear weapon...

Air samples gathered last week contain radioactive materials that confirm that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte’s office said Monday.

Looks like they're preparing another test too...

As the United States confirmed the test, military and intelligence officials have told NBC News that North Korea may be preparing to conduct what could be a test of a second nuclear device. U.S. spy satellites have detected increased activity around a second possible underground test site, “the same kind of activity” seen in the weeks prior to the nuke test a week ago.

So much for all the baseless media speculation that the Chinese were going to use their diplomatic and economic leverage reign in Kim Jong-il.

#18 JWF

Where is the flying pig?

Heh! Got your wish!

Good for them for noticing this particular emperor is sans clothing.

I'm embarrassed that this study came out of Johns Hopkins.

#20 Charles

I think this may call for a reduced-size flying pig.

You're more an optimist than I, Charles - the skeptic in me is waiting for the "however, but" article.

I wouldn't call it intellectual honesty, but defending their own conclusions. Lancet's conclusions totally contradict what this website says, so it's of course completely in the website's interest to defend itself.

#6 & #17

This is my first post on LGF, and I sympathize as having the same problem. Political discussion is practically banned in our family, as I am the only lizard.

As far as the Lancet article, simple math tends to dispute the figure, but *new* math allows it nicely...

/longtime lurker, first time poster

in a detailed and devastating refutation of the ludicrous Lancet article on Iraqi civilian deaths

All that detailed analysis really isn't necessary if you have even a remote grasp of reality, or are capable of doing a little fundamental math.

21 Dirk. It's my opinion that the PRC likes having lil Jong Il around. I think the PRC also like having Hamas and Hizb'allah around too...

But I never, never believed that the Chinese would reign in Kim Jong Il.

#26 Researcher...MO

Welcome to the land of the lizards, my friend.

Where is the article did it read how many of these violent deaths were at the hands of rival peace-loving Sunnis vs Shia? I can't seem to find it

#29 Carolina Girl

Thank you! I am proud to join the ranks here!

#6 Zombie

Seems many are in the same boat regarding the parents...my mom? She thinks Monika Lewinsky was a Republican plant to entrapt and bring down ol' Bill.

I feels ya pain!

#33

Seems many are in the same boat regarding the parents...my mom? She thinks Monika Lewinsky was a Republican plant to entrapt and bring down ol' Bill.

My dear old parents now believe that the moon landings were staged as part of some right-wing conspiracy!

Wow, so there is such a thing as being too moonbatty. Whouda thunk it?

Wish I could have some real numbers to toss onto my former boss's desk the next time he howls about body counts. He thinks that the 100,000 they originally concocted (or whatever the number was) is true. No, I don't know when he drank the Kool-Aid, but it was a looong time ago.

The thing is, Iraq body count has always seemed a bit high and doesn't distinguish between deaths caused by coalition and terrorists. BUT since they constantly update from reports rather than anecdotes, they can't do McDonalds math (billions and billions served). I haven't read the story but I imagine it makes the point that an 85 year old Iraqi dying in bed is not the same as a 13 year old who steps on an IED, let alone someone caught in a crossfire.

Maybe some on the left are starting to wake up to the fact that their "facts" are under scrutiny in a big way and figure that they might want to clean up some of their own garbage because failure to do so is going to throw any credibility they have out with the bath water with lots and lots of people.

#6 zombie

Very sad. The MSM outlets were reporting the Lancet story uncritically, like it was gospel. They are such morons.

Iraq Body Count base their figures on reported deaths. This is unreliable as it doesn't cater for erroneous reporting. Perhaps some deaths slip through the net, perhaps some figures are fictitious.

The Lancet's methodology was much more scientific. They asked a representative cluster sample of Iraqis if anyone they knew of had been killed recently in war-related circumstances.

Then, apparantly, they went into the desert with George Galloway and a dead Native American friend of Jim Morrisson, dropped a bunch of mescaline and came up with the much more realistic figure of "600 Billion Iraqis".

Hmmm.

Politically conservative children of politically liberal parents.

An interesting sub-thread.

Personally, I was the liberal son of a conservative father, who then went on to understand and share my father's point of view as time went on.

Running your own business will do that to you.

Would it be fair to say, a couple generations ago (Boomers) the scenario would have been liberal children of conservative parents, and the opposite for more recent generations?

My husband is a mathermatician by training. I know how to do elementry biostatistics well and next to his ability, mathematically, I am a very short sighted, color blind person with impaired night vision feeling my way around in the semi dark.

In the medical world I am a mathematical genius frequently consulted by the likes of those who publish in the Lancet.

*sigh*

Innumeracy rules in the world of journalism and medicine.

in the land of the blind a very short sighted, color blind person with impaired night vision in the semi dark is queen.

And yes, the Lancet stats suck, big time. No doubt the external reviewers consutled included Red Ken.

Two points about this study:

To believe this study, you would have to presume that in the last yearly period measured by the surveyors over 30,000 people were killed in airstrikes alone. (That is over three times as many people who were killed during the initial year invasion, according to the same survey, BTW.) Furthermore, the ratio of men to women killed by airstrikes is 10:1. This strongly suggests we are hitting insurgents overwhelmingly as opposed to civilians. Consider that even Zarqawi airstrike killed three men and three women. This study would also leave any foreign fighters killed in airstrikes unaccounted for. Also, in spite of much variation in the use of airstrikes during the coarse of the war, the number killed in airstrikes has remarkably only varied from 12-14% of all violent deaths in any given year.

I don't think anyone is estimating we've killed approximately 30,000 insurgents soley by airstrikes in any given year.

I've also brought up the amazingly low rate of refusal (0.8%) in an email conversation I've had with Steve Sailer. A refusal rate this low would be unlikely even going door to door asking such mundane questions as "what is your favorite color?" Many people simply don't want to be bothered by surveyors, or they have guests over, or are planning on leaving momentarily, or are not home at the time, or have to use the bathroom, or simply don't want to be bothered by people asking strange questions. A rate of 0.8% is ridiculously low under any circumstances. To believe the refusal rate would be this low under circumstances where surveyors are inquiring into such personal matters as family deaths, asking a fair number of questions, and asking the surveyed to provide documentation in support of their claims, and doing so in war zone simply stretches credulity. Sailer is much less skeptical than I am about the study, but he does propose a possible mechanism by which the surveyors may have gotten such a low refusal rate and it is this mechanism which may also provide a mechanism for such a high casualty figure. It might also explain why such a high number of people (nearly 90%) were able to produce death certificates upon demand:

Maybe what happened is that the interviewers didn't actually go much door-to-door at random, but instead arrived in a neighborhood, put the word out, and then either had people who wanted to talk to them come see them or were invited to the homes of people who wanted to see them. That might account for the very high % of people with death certificates available.

Or it could be that the interviewers got in contact ahead of time with neighborhood leaders to see if their presence would be welcome to reduce their chances of being killed. (That's not good random surveying hygiene, but are you going to blame them?) Then, in a neighborhood where the local big shot wanted their presence, he might have passed the word around to aggrieved families to get ready to tell their stories to the interviewers when they showed up. This could cause a bias upward in the number of deaths reported.

The more I think about the mechanics of carrying out the survey on the street without getting killed, the more I suspect that the Iraqi interviewers didn't actually implement the purely random survey design that the American professors from MIT and Johns Hopkins dreamed up for them. It would be nuts to to let luck determine which streets you'd choose, as the report claims they did. You'd want to only go where you knew you'd be safe. Then you'd tell the Americans you did exactly what they told you to do.

So they walked up to people with a reason to exaggerate the death tolls, and asked them what the death tolls were.

BRILLIANT!

Iraqi blogger Zeyad had an interesting take on the Lancet report:

...Simply put, the methods used by the study are valid, but in Iraq’s case, where the level of violence is not consistent throughout the country, I feel that the study should have been done differently. 654,965 excess civilian deaths is an absurd number. My personal guesstimate would be half that number, but the total count is not the point now...

I'm not sure if this (counting civilian deaths)is a left or right issue. Sure, the 'greeted as liberators' crowd would predictably downplay such a number, and the 'war crimes' crowd would tout the study as proof that the invasion has been a disaster of immense magnitude, but somewhere in there there must be an objective estimate. Personally, I think the fact that the estimates are all over the board is indicative of how bad it really is over there. No one really knows, including our own president, apparently.

As far as IBC goes, of course they were going to dispute the survey, as it makes the methodology of their own estimates look grossly inaccurate. Not exactly a 'flying pig moment' IMO.

I do think it's a little odd that a website that aims to point out the apparent violent nature of Muslims would turn around and want to call a survey that seems to validate that position as 'leftist', but that's just me.

#26 Researcher...MO

Welcome!

I just finished reading the article. It's worth reading. It's about time someone takes a serious look at the Lancet report and refutes it.

The MSM are tools...

As well as many Americans (sadly), which explains why these ridiculous reports are released in the first place. There's always gonna be somebody that will believe stuff like that.

Here is the Digg link for the story.

[Link: www.digg.com...]

The Lancet researchers visited 47 neighbourhoods and conducted interviews in 40 adjoining households in each neighbourhood.

Hardly a statistically random sample. Kudos to IBC for a very thoughtful analysis.

The 600K fugure just makes the anti-war left look worse so the saner left had to stop it. The implosion continues...

THE BURNHAM AND ROBERTS SHOW

ACT 1

BURNHAM: Let's see, how should we make sure it's a random sample?
ROBERTS: How about if we choose random residential streets that cross randomly chosen main streets in random governorates?
BURNHAM: Excellent! That's completely unbiased! But how do you define "main street"?
ROBERTS: Like any reasonable person would: a couple of central market places, maybe a police recruiting station, you might even see a military convoy rolling through on a typical day.
BURNHAM: So the possibility of an occasional IED, bombing, execution, sniper...
ROBERTS: Of course, can't be ruled out statistically, never said that. But this is the established, gold standard method that is universally accepted in peer reviewed journals.
BURNHAM: Sounds like a plan...