About time.

Doesn't matter. The Big Lie of 100,000 deaths is already out there & everyone except us has swallowed it.

on a side note... look at the MSM. They are trying like hell to spin nagative news about Iraq and the President.

You can smell it...

It's always in the assumptions, and liars like these never want to make them known. And the MSM is always a willing accomplice in publishing this hysteria.

Lancet got lanced.

Here's something else to keep in mind - nearly all those deaths are Islamists against other Muslims or Sunni v. Shia or Shia v. Sunni. Without the US present, the body count would be much higher - either if we had not gone in (Saddam still in charge of the butcher's bill) or if we cut and run - leaving the Islamists to turn the streets red with blood.

Of course it was faulty, anyone actually paying attention knew that already. But the average 30 second sound-byte news which the majority of non political-junkie American get spin this time and time again and ignore the facts of it's inaccuracies

It's why pencils have erasers.

An interesting side note: as Kane observes in his paper, the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).”

typical. Stalinist Left-wingers never have to lift up the curtain. We should have blind-faith absolute trust in their agenda. *spit*

the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).”

= We lied.

Properly doing a survey sample is an art form in itself. Without any indication of the design of the survey and the methodology of the analysis, it should be rejected out of hand as tripe. To do a stratified cluster survey, you must pick your stuff in a certain manner, not in a predetermined lets pretend manner. I say this as someone who has done survey sampling way back when after I graduated with my Masters from MIT in course 6.

re: #2 BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey

Doesn't matter. The Big Lie of 100,000 deaths is already out there & everyone except us has swallowed it.

They've moved past that and glommed on to the suspect 2006 finding of 655,000 deaths.

re: #12 Geepers

the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).”

= We lied.

Nice executive summary there, Geeps. :)

But..but..rosie said it was over 600,000 dead.

/

re: #2 BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey

Doesn't matter. The Big Lie of 100,000 deaths is already out there & everyone except us has swallowed it.

How right you are. It is very difficult to refute such things after their widespread acceptance as "fact." Look at the "Jenin massacre" lie, Mohammad al-Dura, and countless other such blatant falsehoods.

I will also note that the excess deaths (if such there be) are the result of various tribal and inter-secular acts. Leaving Iraq will only make these worse not better.

btw, I wonder what the Lancet had to say about the excess deaths of the Kurds under Sadam using chemical weapons.

/chirping birds

No surprise whatsoever. But unfortunately, a perfect case of "damage done, move on to next target" for the Left and its get-away drivers, the MSM.

But--but--math is a western construct designed to oppress people of color! If you taught Mayan counting, you'd come up with 100,000 dead! Bushitlerhaliburton!

There are 100,000 deaths a year...in America...from doctor f***k ups.

Dar ul Harb (#15),

Whenever someone say: "Just trust me", I don't.

even more wildly inflated claims

Conjures up that awful image of "inflated scrotum guy." Thank you very much...

Meanwhile, Scott Johnson at Power Line has a nice summary of the current state of The New Republic's "Scott Thomas" tales:

I am in a state of "near certainty" that "the editors" don't have a clue regarding the veracity of Thomas's article.

re: #16 newsjunkie_ky

But..but..rosie said it was over 600,000 dead.

/

That's the 2006 study by the Lancet. Not sure if it was the same methodology...

I sometimes think the American and international Left don't even really know what their motives are. This is a perfect example. The Lancet and its ilk want to inflate Iraqi death tolls, blame it on the USA right before a presidential election in the hope that Jean Kerry would get elected and pull us out of Iraq...which would then lead to a sectarian slaughter of biblical proportions and the conflagration of the entire middle east with no forces left to try and stop it. Then they'll call it "peace" and put their papier mache heads back in the basement and their own heads in the sand.

I'd try to find something funny with this dementia but if these people have their way the joke will be on all of us.

re: #5 taxfreekiller

Hey, tfk... :)
Gave you a sort of "hat tip"... :)

I cannot begin to understand some of the math but I do know that if a supposedly honest survey refuses to provide its methodology it sets itself up for embarrassment. For a medical journal that prides itself on its professionalism, it has a lot of explaining to do.
Or will it duck out on that, as well?

100,000 dead? Easy enough now that the Reaper is deployed.

re: #14 HeatherRadish

re: #2 BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey

Doesn't matter. The Big Lie of 100,000 deaths is already out there & everyone except us has swallowed it.

They've moved past that and glommed on to the suspect 2006 finding of 655,000 deaths.

The what what? To paraphrase Dirty Harry, "Anyone can see we didn't do that to Iraq. The place looks too damn good."

or even a precise description of the actual methodology

Wait. Forget political agendas. How did a paper with no detailed methodological discussion section get into a peer-reviewed journal?

re: #21 Hard Right

There are 100,000 deaths a year...in America...from doctor f***k ups.

Will be eliminated under socialized health care.
/

re: #32 BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey

re: #21 Hard Right

There are 100,000 deaths a year...in America...from doctor f***k ups.

Will be eliminated under socialized health care.
/

*snicker* Yeah. You gotta be able to see a doctor before they can mess up.

The artistry is in telling a lie, while using good statistics and methodology. According to this report, they weren't even using good methods. Lazy Lancet LLLs.

Statistics can be used to prove anything. 47% of all people know that.

I have taken 3 semesters of Statistics in college and grad school - I still hate statistics and my eyes glaze over when I read about stats. This is why the public swallows this stuff hook, line and sinker. How do you argue with "facts"? How do you argue with scientists? Dirty little secret: it's easy. They are capable of doing just about anything when reputation is involved.

re: #26 obscured by clouds

you are making an assumption that the left cares about the people killed

by their actions the left only cares about power

I came across these sterling sources who backed up The Lancet's story:

"I have checked the facts with my sources in the area. The Lancet's statistical data is completely factual."
--Jayson Blair

"I have seen multiple dead bodies many times. I haven't touched any of them."
--Salam Daher

"I have the pictures to prove The Lancet's research. Call me."
--Adnan Hajj

It just shows that scholarship on the Left is a mutilated by Bush Derangement Syndrome as is the rest of their hapless hoardes.

They just can't think anymore.

I tend to think it another example of a conclusion in search of a study to confirm it.
Like come from the CDC.

An interesting side note: as Kane observes in his paper, the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).”

That is not surprising in the least. So they want you to accept the data as true, but not show you the raw data from with the statistics were derived.

Whenever someone does that, you can be sure the data has been "massaged" in some way that isnt kosher...

re: #38 wargammer2005

You're right. I did give them the benefit of the doubt and shouldn't have.

#31 Rightwingprof

Wait. Forget political agendas. How did a paper with no detailed methodological discussion section get into a peer-reviewed journal?

That is a good question. Didnt think of that...every paper has to have methods section. The reviewers must have agreed with the "message" that the paper was sending so they were a bit lenient on the rating system.

#40 >> they never could think - most "scholarship" - research - reports etc is based solely on jinning up the next grant -- damned leaches - 90% of them -- very little really new stuff or knowledge is actually produced - that which is - is swiftly spirited out the back door and into the private sector where the mass producers and their law-yahs get all the profit -- this is nothing new and was in full force in all the major universities by 1960 -- publish or perish - law of the faculty tenure -- has nothing to do with the "teaching ability" - interest or talent of the prof -- worst teaching profs were the dorks with all the research grants --

Bad Math, Bad Science: The Impact on the Lancet Iraq Death Toll Study

"...The researchers did release some high-level summary data in highly aggregated form (see here), but they released neither the detailed interviewee-level data nor the programming code that would be necessary to replicate their results."

Of course. Mathematics and progressives are most definitely not friends.

Mad scientist 44,

You are correct about a Methods section. Was this really a peer-reviewed paper, or just part of an opinion piece by the editors which may not be subject to review?

jeezo...I thought it was rough trying to understand Charles' geeky computereze. Bottom lines are alright but understanding is better.

Oh and btw to put this in perspective, it is estimated that there are 5,000 excess deaths on the American roads each year from people talking on the cellphones and drinking coffee. There are also between 500-1,000 excess deaths per year (as estimated in the DSM-IV Casebook) from people doing sexual strangulation (asphyxiophilia sometimes referred to as scarfing).

Numbers in isolation are meaningless. There is no worse statistical hack than a doctor pretending to be a statistician. And btw, what was the null hypothesis in this survey?

Totally and utterly irrelevant

The meme is cauderized into the average voters heads on a daily basis for the last 3 years from MSNBC, CBS, TIME, Newsweak, Chrissy Matthews, Pelosireiddurbin, etc et al . Its "fact" now, regardless of multiple debunkings

Orwell would be tenting in his pants at his clairvoyance

This was in fact a journalistic IED attempting to blow up the American election. Thankfully, it failed.

As others have pointed out, the leftists at the Lancet nevertheless accomplished one of their goals, which was to plant an untruth in the minds of much of the public. Our strategy at this point should be an all-out assault on the Lancet to highlight its lack of credibility on such matters, and to put it on notice that we will be holding it accountable in the future. The leftist "insurgent press" is going to feel the heat from now on for any "fake but accurate" articles they attempt to discharge on the public.

And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Islamo/Libera-fascists. :)

Another critical study on this topic released recently:

Iraqis may experience sadness when loved ones die

I don't believe that the accuracy of any studies that show a civilian death toll to be less than Lancet will be accepted by the lunatics who constitute a large percentage of the dem party.

They will always believe in whatever myth blows the maximum amount of patchouli-smoke up their butts.

#21 Hard Right 7/25/2007 8:42:14
>>There are 100,000 deaths a year...in America...from doctor f***k ups.

Ah, yes the "To Err is Human" paper from the Institute of Medicine.

Review a bunch of old hospital charts. Look for charts that ended in a patient death in the hospital. Find, say, a patient with terminal cancer, who died in the hospital. Look for an order for an extra-strength Tylenol. Somewhere in the hospitalization, a nurse gave a regular Tylenol.

You have an error on the chart, and you have a death. Wave the magic wand and CLAIM that the error caused the death. Extrapolate to the entire country, and you have the 100,000 deaths. Or whatever the number was, every time I turn around, a different number is claimed.

The journals do a lot of damage with these garbage studies.

Study also utilized cluster sampling which created untold thousands upon thousands of "redundant" civilian deaths. If you ask 1,000 people in a community if they know someone who died, you might get 100 of them saying that they knew someone who died.

They might have all just known the same guy, or the same 5 guys.

The methodology used in the Lancet study was so bad, on many other levels as well, as to actually be a blight on the face of science generally and the media specifically.

Disinformation such as this reaffirms the primary thesis that the left disseminates concerning the military. Peace can never come through military action. The military is the deterrent to a peaceful America/world. The military only kills and destroys. Only diplomacy can bring about peace.
kelleyb
blue star mom

I wrote on the Guardians CiF to Richard Horton, the Lancets editor, to ask if the paper had in fact gone through peer review. He never , to my knowlege, called it a peer-reviewed paper in any of his writings.

here he is:-
[Link: www.socialistworker.co.uk...]

Britain is riddled like old wormwood with leftist doctrine which has allowed in additional woodrot in the form of non-assimilating colonizing Muslims.

Probably the only reason the Brits were "allowed" to oppose Hitler was that he bit the Left's hero Stalin in the ass after signing their secret co-operation pact (Molotov-Ribbentropf). What passed for British intelligentsia housed nests of Marxist cells with spies for the Soviet Union in the highest ranks of government and civil service, hobnobbing with the Queen no less, some of whom scuttled off like cockroaches to their true communist homeland to honors after being found out in Britain. The vast majority remained under the radar in university posts etc. toiling at undermining capitalism and conservative thought.

Even a once reputable scientific journal such as the Lancet is drenched in leftism that malforms science to further its agenda. The tip-off is the refusal to make one's methodology known. True science requires complete openness so other researchers can replicate the findings (or not). Ideology does not allow the "or not" . Note that the environment file is similarly polluted with junk science furthering leftist ideology.

As to what to do to eradicate those pernicious memes that the Left has such success in implanting through their creature, the MSM, it has to be eradicated by being equally repetitious. File this study and cite it everywhere and every time that the false figure is regurgitated.