More on the Johns Hopkins paper

[chickenfeet]

From the BBC.

US President George W Bush has dismissed the report, saying he does not consider it "credible".

"I stand by the figure that a lot of innocent people have lost their life," he said.

"Six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible."

Way to go for insightful statistical analysis! Let's repeat it. The methodology is fundamentally sound. The numbers are estimates subject to normal sampling error. Whether one takesmidpoint or upper bound or lower bound figures one is looking at numbers comparable to the Ruanda genocide. Facts don't go away because an innumerate twerp claims that they are "not credible".

Comments

[globetrotter1.livejournal.com]

"Six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible."

Such eloquence.

[sabotabby]

I stand by the figure that a lot of innocent people have lost their life

*blinks*

What?

[krustukles.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those putzes at that fly-by-night mail-order degree "institution", Johns Hopkins. What do they know? You can make statistics say anything!

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Right. Slap me one and tell me I'm not allowed to give in to utter despair just yet, and I'll owe you one for a future occasion.

I'll be over here with my head on my desk...

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Much as I'd like to slap you one in all conscience I couldn't. I'm not going to give in quite yet though. These are dark days and the odds are not good and while I doubt that Bush will ever be in the dock at The Hague I could envisage the day when like, say, Pinochet, his immunity for his crimes is lifted and he faces a bleak old age being harried hither and yon.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Well, gimme a drink then, I got a municipal election to work on...

Esperfuckingance!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

It's one am in Paris but tomorrow I'll find you the various links on why the numbers are NOT in fact credible, even though it was Buish who said it.

Serious estimates say between 50,000 and 60,000 (which is still 50,000 - 60,000 TOO MANY.)

I find it TERRIFYING that scientific outlets let themselves be so blinded by ideology that they print something completely impossible. Barack Obama (quoting Daniel Patrick Moynihan) says everyone is entitled to their own set of opinions, but no-one are entiled to their own set of facts.

And again, even with the (comparatively!) smaller numbers, you can make a hell of a case. So WHY, blast it, WHY falsify facts & method and trash a respected medical publication in the bargain???

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I shall check your links with interest but so far the rebuttals I have seen are nonsense. They either fail to understand the methodology used or they rely on Iraqi government compilations of mortality statistics which are way out for reasons that are easily understandable. As I see it we have an article authored by a research team at the US', perhaps the world's, leading Academic Health Sciences Centre, using a research methodology that is perfectly straightforward and fit for the purpose. The article is peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal. The refutations, such as they are, have not come from equally well qualified scientists. The powers that have had the ability since the invasion to finance alternative research by credible investigators have declined to do so.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to see those rebuttals as well. The ones I have seen so far have clearly missed the point of the current study, which was to estimate the total mortality resulting from the war. That's a very different thing than the number of (reported) civilian casualties incurred during (official) military operations, for example, which is what that 50 - 60 thousand seems to be. Apples and kumquats...

Pre-war there were people complaining about how many people died as a result of the international sanctions - IIRC the estimates were in the hundreds of thousands, mostly children, from malnutrition and disease. I'd be rather surprised if the casualties resulting from the complete destruction of the country's infrastructure and government were not on the same scale.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

how many people died as a result of the international sanctions - IIRC the estimates were in the hundreds of thousands, mostly children, from malnutrition and disease

Considering that Saddam siphoned off some $15 BILLION from the Oil-For-Food programme, wouldn't you rather say these people died from the corruption and graft of the regime and its assorted clients at the UN and elsewhere?

Ah, but it wouldn't be as good a headline, would it?

I always found those figures incredibly dishonest, as they are based on projections chosen to fit their authors' ideological criteria, using figures provided by considerably less than neutral sources.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

My point was that a large number of people died as a result of the sanctions. Assign blame however you want, it doesn't change the conclusion. (I do share your distrust of the numbers, though for a different reason - I never saw the methodologies used to derive them, so have no basis for trust.)

And if you want to talk about corruption, and BILLIONS siphoned off, I think the post-2003 record eclipses that $15bn by quite a lot.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

the complete destruction of the country's infrastructure and government were not on the same scale.

"Complete"? What a sweeping generalisation. Especially as completely destroying the infrastructure of a country the size of France would require a truly amazing logistical effort.

Not a word on the actual state most of this infrastructure was, either.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

'Complete' is obviously an overstatement but I don't think one should underestimate the damage that was done to water supply, sanitation and power supply. Nor the severe disruption of the healthcare system. Those are all things which continue to contribute to an elevated mortality rate.

A 'truly amazing logistical effort' was exactly what it was. That, after all, is what the US Armed Forces are really, really good at. Putting scarcely credible amounts of HE onto the stuff they want to blow up.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Sweeping generalizations are rather the rule in one-paragraph discussions, n'est-ce pas? And I'd say that "Shock and Awe" WAS a truly amazing logistical effort.

Still, if the word "complete" bothers you, substitute some fraction that you think is justified. My conclusion stands: the war did (is doing) so much damage to the country that I would be surprised if the mortality rate didn't shoot up. When even garbage collection is a life-threatening occupation, public health is going to get worse - even if it was bad before. (It doesn't really matter what the state of the infrastructure was before the war; the plain fact is that the war made it a lot worse.)