Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

[Donna Ferentes]

In general I don't see that TeeJay's objections to the study are best answered with abuse.

 

[TeeJay]

I thought you had me on ignore, cunt. You're not only a nitpicking sod, you're a liar.

I do have you on ignore, but since this is a thread I am particularly involved with I decided to have a look at what you posted.

You are disputing the figures produced by the Lancet for god-only-knows what purpose.

And you are supporting them for god-knows-what purpose.

...And that about sums you up, TeeJay: you're a mindless nitpicker who will come along and shove pointless stats in people's faces in an effort to prove yourself intellectually superior or to take the other side, simply for the sake of being awkward.

This whole thread is about statistics - the figure produced by a survey into the mortality rate in Iraq.

If you don't want to talk about statistics then why are you posting on this thread?

Why you you say that the number of people being killed in Iraq is "pointless"? Do you not think it is an important issue?

There are political points behind the general debate about these figures although they don't flow automatically: The argument could be made that the figures suggest that US and UK troops should be withdrawn, but equally others could argue that there aren't *enough* troops there, or that the level of killings mean that there should be no immediate withdrawal.

Ultimately the discussion here is about these figures - are they plausible and relaible, or has the survey produced and unbelievable and over0inflated figure?

If anyone gave a shit about this issue then maybe we would have moved on by now to comparing and contrasting different sets of figures, discussing where the violebce is occuring, why and who was involved, and what could be done about it (if we were discussing the wider issue) or maybe we would just be discussing the details of the survey itself (if we were keeping it to the specific issue being discussed).

Unfortunately it seems that people prefer to scream at each other, make personal attacks, avoid any actual discussion of the topic itself and generally vent of their emotions and personal vendettas.

Maybe you will finally succeed in getting everyone you hate to walk away from these forums (although this is doubtful) but ultimately what will this leave you with? You sitting in your own verbal waste screaming at the walls? You have pretty much got there already by the look of it.

Back on *ignore* then. Obviously it is a waste of time even imagining that you are going to say anything intelligent rather than spew your usual shite everywhere in a knee-jerk reaction to seeing me post anything at all.

Bye bye.

 

[nino_savatte]

Ah, ye of the auld moral high ground. Abuse? Quel abuse? I give as good as I get.

 

[TeeJay]

No, not unless you've studied statistics. You are basically calling a lot of people liars, and you don't realise it.

So are you going to answer any of the 8 points I raised or just throw personal abuse around?

 

[nino_savatte]

I do have you on ignore, but since this is a thread I am particularly involved with I decided to have a look at what you posted.
And you are supporting them for god-knows-what purpose.
This whole thread is about statistics - the figure produced by a survey into the mortality rate in Iraq.

If you don't want to talk about statistics then why are you posting on this thread?

Why you you say that the number of people being killed in Iraq is "pointless"? Do you not think it is an important issue?

There are political points behind the general debate about these figures although they don't flow automatically: The argument could be made that the figures suggest that US and UK troops should be withdrawn, but equally others could argue that there aren't *enough* troops there, or that the level of killings mean that there should be no immediate withdrawal.

Ultimately the discussion here is about these figures - are they plausible and relaible, or has the survey produced and unbelievable and over0inflated figure?

If anyone gave a shit about this issue then maybe we would have moved on by now to comparing and contrasting different sets of figures, discussing where the violebce is occuring, why and who was involved, and what could be done about it (if we were discussing the wider issue) or maybe we would just be discussing the details of the survey itself (if we were keeping it to the specific issue being discussed).

Unfortunately it seems that people prefer to scream at each other, make personal attacks, avoid any actual discussion of the topic itself and generally vent of their emotions and personal vendettas.

Maybe you will finally succeed in getting everyone you hate to walk away from these forums (although this is doubtful) but ultimately what will this leave you with? You sitting in your own verbal waste screaming at the walls? You have pretty much got there already by the look of it.

Back on *ignore* then. Obviously it is a waste of time even imagining that you are going to say anything intelligent rather than spew your usual shite everywhere in a knee-jerk reaction to seeing me post anything at all.

Bye bye.

There you go, reading things into my post that don't exist. Happy are you?

Why you you say that the number of people being killed in Iraq is "pointless"? Do you not think it is an important issue?

You're obviously hallucinating, TeeJay. I said nothing of the kind. If you can't be honest, what's the point?

Funny how you missed my point about The Lancet studies in Sierra Leone and DRC, isn't it? Anyone would think that you had an axe to grind.

Oh, thanks for the mindless screed. It sums you up to a tee.

 

[laptop]

Presumably in a minute TeeJay will be arguing that the National Crime Survey should be ignored and attention should be paid only to statistics gleaned from newspapers.

Because the NCS is a sampling survey and most if not all of his "objections" apply to it, and the Body Count figures comes from a survey of newspapers and agencies.

Does he then conclude that there is very little petty burglary in Brixton?

 

[TeeJay]

Presumably in a minute TeeJay will be arguing that the National Crime Survey should be ignored and attention should be paid only to statistics gleaned from newspapers.

Because the NCS is a sampling survey and most if not all of his "objections" apply to it, and the Body Count figures comes from a survey of newspapers and agencies.

Does he then conclude that there is very little petty burglary in Brixton?

Come on laptop you can do better than this. Pathetic.

I have not argued against 'sampling' per se.

I have not argued that the Body Count figure should trump everything else.

I have not even argued that the results of this survey have no meaning or shouldn't be treated as one piece of evidence amongst others.

Strawman crap.

At this rate I am going to put you on ignore as well, because you are refusing to debate this in an intelligent way, just using ad hominems, sneering, strawman arguments and are making no attempt at all at honest debate.

Your argument (if you want to take it to the level of simplified strawmen) seems to be 'if the technique applied is technically correct I will accept any result it produces without question regardless of any other evidence'.

I will continue debating this with anyone who will actually engage with the issues but I am not going to waste any more time throwing insults backwards and forwards or using this thread as an exercising in venting emotions, screaming about 'Bush and Bliars illegal invasions' and generally carrying on like a bunch of brain-damanged swappies.

I might as well instead spend my time looking for intelligent debate elsewhere if I really want to debate the figures and what is going on in Iraq. Sad really.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> At this rate I am going to put you on ignore as well<snip>

Can you put me on ignore too please?

 

[nino_savatte]

I'd like to say that Teejay is putting forward a hidden discourse, though he doesn't seem sure what that discourse is.

 

[Jessiedog]

Does he then conclude that there is very little petty burglary in Brixton?

Is that what the newspapers say?



Woof

 

[laptop]

I might as well instead spend my time looking for intelligent debate elsewhere

You might as well indeed...

What a rant. How desperate are you to distract and divert attention from the unequivocal conclusion of the study, which is: a fuck of a lot of people have died following the invasion of Iraq, far more than anyone had estimated previously?

 

[laptop]

Is that what the newspapers say?

Well, they don't say much at all about petty burglary in Brixton, do they. Court statistics say a bit more. Police arrest statistics say a bit more than that. The Crime Survey says quite a lot more - it allows one to deduce the number of crimes never reported to anyone else.

 

[TeeJay]

What a rant. How desperate are you to distract and divert attention from the unequivocal conclusion of the study, which is: a fuck of a lot of people have died following the invasion of Iraq, far more than anyone had estimated previously?

Not at all laptop...

I agree that a fuck of a lot of people have died following the invasion of Iraq and that this is a tragedy, both for anyone killed and for Iraq as a whole.

The exact numbers are disputed (the specific topic of this thread).

What to do about it is disputed.

Where the majority of the blame lies is disputed.

Anyone who is somehow 'distracted and diverted' from what is happening in Iraq by a thread that discusses what is happening in Iraq has to be some kind of moron. I hope you are not feeling distracted and diverted laptop?

Now we have got that issue out of the way, maybe we could stop making ourselves the centre of the debate and start talking about Iraq again, the study that was done in Iraq and other sources of information about what is going on?

 

[Jonti]

So are you going to answer any of the 8 points I raised or just throw personal abuse around?

It is not abusive to say one needs an understanding of statistics to understand the debate. On the other hand, to accuse someone of personal abuse for mentioning that fact, could well be seen as unneccessarily offensive.

Libellous, too.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Has anyone actually read the report yet?

It's on the Lancet's 'free registration' section here.

 

[Jessiedog]

Well, they don't say much at all about petty burglary in Brixton, do they. Court statistics say a bit more. Police arrest statistics say a bit more than that. The Crime Survey says quite a lot more - it allows one to deduce the number of crimes never reported to anyone else.

I don't really know about what the media say about Brixton.



Just would have thought that the local rags were full of local stuff about burglaries if it's a problem.


But I get your overall point, of course.



Anyway.....

Back to the stats'.



Woof

 

[slaar]

Back to the stats indeed.

Horse shit. Some things have a 'normal distribution' others have lopsided distributions. Yes there are assumptions going on and no it isn't anything to do with "the nature of numbers".

To start us off then teejay, following on from my last post but in more detail, here is why your point about the assumption of a normal distribution being invalid is entirely spurious:

http://www.statisticalengineering.com/central_limit_theorem.htm

The CLT is responsible for this remarkable result:

The distribution of an average tends to be Normal, even when the distribution from which the average is computed is decidedly non-Normal.

Furthermore, this normal distribution will have the same mean as the parent distribution, AND, variance equal to the variance of the parent divided by the sample size.

Thus, the Central Limit theorem is the foundation for many statistical procedures

You can get this in any A Level maths textbook, it's not particularly advanced.

Especially relevant is this bit

Notice that when the sample size approaches a couple dozen, the distribution of the average is very nearly Normal, even though the parent distribution looks anything but Normal.

So a sample size of 24 means it approaches normal distribution. What's the sample size here? 12,000.

 

[slaar]

I read that article earlier but maybe you could remind me what it says about the following problems with the figures:

1. The mis-match between the lower "baseline" (pre-invasion) figures and higher UN, NGO and anti-embargo-campainger figures about mortaility rates prior to the invasion.

Different research comes up with different results, that's not exactly novel. This study is likely to be more comprehensive and accurate than studies conducted by proxy like most of the above were.

2. Problems with actually being able to do proper random sampling when the census figures are so unreliable, when populations have been moving around and when the security situation is so hostile.

The paper actually discusses this in great detail, but it's remarkably close to a random sample given the quite obviously insane research environment.

3. In interpreting the figures - the stark discontinuities across regions of Iraq ie far higher to the north and west of Baghdad, by age, gender and other group - ends up giving utterly ridiculous figures for the worst affected areas. Obviously something has gone wrong in this study.

This makes no sense at all.

4. Implicit assumptions of bell curves and normal distributions contained within the study.

Already answered.

5. The lack of bodies: where are they?

Have you read the journal articles footnoted in the Lancet paper? 15-20 percent body counts relative to final deaths from ex-post comprehensive surveys is not just commonplace in war zones but almost universal in the literature for a number of reasons listed in the paper.

6. Given that the study claims that 92% of deaths were backed up by death certificates, why is there such a large mismatch between these numbers and the Iraqi ministry of health and figures from other Iraqi bodies - the very bodies that issue death certiicates in the first place. There is something going here that doesn't add up, yet the study doesn't even address this at all, simply taking certificates at face value.

You don't think there might be a political reason for deflating death figures in these Ministries?

7. The total lack of analysis of possible motivations for over reporting of fatalities - for example political views, an awareness of the reasons behind the survey and possible compensation for fatalities. The survey simply dismisses a whole range of questions out of hand, assuming that pe3ople are giving accurate information or are being totally honest.

92 percent are backed with death certificates. Are you suggesting there is a giant forgery plant churning these out for propaganda purposes? If not, 8 percent makes no odds to the scale of the figures.

8. Finally, and most importantly, the study itself hints at various conclusions being drawn - about cause and effect, the role of US/UK forces and various other value judgements and political viewpoints whicn are largely out of place within a so-called neutral survey.

Where? There are conclusions drawn from the numbers, and a humanitarian interpretation of possible ways deaths might decrease in numbers. I don't see that as in any way being contrary to a definition of neutrality that involved anything other than a humanitarian philosophy.

This is taken even further by the media and people with a view on the desirability or otherwise of US/UK foreign policy - in other words the survey itself seems to contain bias and a 'view' in its commentary and jumps to various conclusions within its text. Various people have already started using this survey to make claims that go beyond what even the survey itself makes, and the Lancet's editor is looking more and more like a tabloid editor rather than impartial medical science publisher.

What has the media reaction got to do with the validity of the study?

The problems with this survey don't primarily revolve around details regression analysis or the statistical techniques used, and you don't have to look very far in science to see people making massive mistakes because they simply plough ahead with theoretically "correct" techniques but mess up some other very basic parametres and reality checks. Pseudo-scientists often are the most dangerous as they are so blind to the wider context and such unquestioning faith in their mechanical 'techniques' that they produce utter drivel without even realising or admitting they have done so.

Your points are all open to more debate, which is the entire purpose of academic research. I note that not a single peer-reviewed study has emerged critiqueing the last Lancet report despite the fuss raised at the time. Your ad hominems about 'pseudo-scientists' are amusing when you're talking about a peer-reviewed article printed in one of the world's foremost Medical research journals from academics at one of the world's top medical and epidemiological research schools. What exactly is psuedo about that?

 

[Barking_Mad]

A reply from Les Roberts to Paul Reynolds at the BBC, via MediaLens editor

ML - I sent the criticisms you reported in your article, 'Huge gaps in Iraq
death estimates,' to report co-author Les Roberts, who replied (October 13).
Here are the criticisms:

"There is also the criticism that, crudely, the numbers of bodies being
discovered do not match the figures.

"It is assumed that the 601,000 violent 'excess' deaths between March 2003
and July 2006 (about 40 months) should produce an average of about 500
violent deaths per day.

"This is not going to be so all the time, given the spikes of violence, but
it is a rough criterion.

"The latest figures from the Iraqi health ministry (reported by the
Associated Press news agency on 11 October) stated that 2,667 people were
killed in Baghdad during September, 400 more than in August.

"This gives an average of about 86 per day in the capital.

"Baghdad is not the whole country of course, but AP reported the United
Nations as saying that in July and August, 6,599 people were killed across
the country, of which 5,106 were in Baghdad.

"This suggests that Baghdad has by far the highest number of actual and
percentage dead.

"So, if the current rate in Baghdad is about 86 and the countrywide figure
should be about 500 according to the Lancet report, where are the "missing"
dead?

"The answer from the report's authors would be that the dead are there, but
have not been counted."


This is Les Roberts' revealing response:

"a) our study now, and in 2004, and NCCI, all found the violence rate in
Baghdad lower than the rest of the country. Thus, if there is a system
counting 5000 deaths in a month in Baghdad and 1000 elsewhere, it just means
it is very incomplete elsewhere.

"b) At a baseline rate of 5/1000/yr. there should be ~300 deaths a day from
natural causes. How many per day are recorded by the government? Not many.
That indicates how complete the surveillance is."

 

[slaar]

Indeed, the fact that this includes ALL deaths, whether caused by the war or not, is crucial. Indeed it's where the study's power comes from, even being able to delineate the recent spike in non-violent deaths. I highly recommend reading the original paper, it's really quite good.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Funny how no one complained about the same group when they said 3 million had died in the Congo. I didn't see people questioning the figures back then. In fact Bush, the US State Department and Blair (who cited the figures in his 2001 Labour Conference speech) and the media made great play of them when it suited the agenda. Now however it clearly does not, so all these statistics are clearly a bit 'dodgy' and they are simply trying to make a 'political point'.

I wonder if those arguing against them would be quite so questioning had it not been the UK and US who had invaded Iraq? Denial is an ugly thing.

 

[slaar]

I'll bet you it's a hell of a lot easier doing this study in Iraq, as difficult as it is, with a largely educated populace and death certificates too. I can't imagine walking into the Ituri rainforest or a camp on Darfur and getting results that are anywhere near as reliable.

 

[TeeJay]

Your points are all open to more debate

Thank you for this comment.

Maybe it would be better if I stepped back a bit and let people have a bit more debate before I respond to any of your comments.

I do have things I would like to respond to, but I'd rather see a discussion of some sort emerge instead of a flame war so I will come back to this after the weekend and see where things have got to.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Pollster Zogby chips in.......

Pollster Zogby '95 percent' sure of 650,000 Iraqi death toll

Expert pollster John Zogby is "95 percent certain" that around 650,000 Iraqis civilians have died since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. A new study by Iraqi physicians and Americans from Johns Hopkins University polled 1,800 Iraqis to calculate an approximate number of casualties since the beginning of the war.

In an interview on CNN International, Zogby explains that the methodology used in the study is very reliable. "The methodology, from what I've seen of the survey, is quite good," he remarked. He is also in agreement with the study's estimate of 650,000 casualties, saying, "I can't vouch for it 100 percent, but I'll vouch for it 95 percent, which is as good as it gets in survey research."

At a press conference earlier in the day, President Bush said that he did not agree with the study's results, saying, "I think that methodology has been pretty well discredited."

 

[slaar]

Thank you for this comment.

Maybe it would be better if I stepped back a bit and let people have a bit more debate before I respond to any of your comments.

I do have things I would like to respond to, but I'd rather see a discussion of some sort emerge instead of a flame war so I will come back to this after the weekend and see where things have got to.

No worries.

Although perhaps that should have read, all comments except number 4!

 

[slaar]

At a press conference earlier in the day, President Bush said that he did not agree with the study's results, saying, "I think that methodology has been pretty well discredited."

What a cunt. Who exactly has discredited it, and why does he parrot figures relating to other wars that fit his agenda?

Actually, don't answer that one.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Just found this on the MIT site.

The School of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, Iraq, and The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University--in cooperation with MIT's Center for International Studies--have released a report on the under-examined question of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Its central conclusion, based on a population-based survey conducted at some risk by a team of Iraqi and American public health researchers, is that approximately 600,000 people have died violently above the normal mortality rate. Including non-violent deaths that are nevertheless linked to the war, the total is estimated to be more than 650,000.

On October 12, 2006, the survey results will be published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

The report on the survey findings, methods and implications, is available here. "The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-2006" explains the cluster survey method; discusses how so many fatalities are possible; looks at the overall status of health in Iraq; examines U.S. military casualties and deaths and their long-term consequences, and discusses policy implications of the study.

source

NB, the embedded link is a pdf.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The always excellent Jahr Jamail report on the Lancet report.

Excess Death in Iraq

It is the single most important statistic regarding the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq. How many Iraqis have been killed?

655,000.

655,000 Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I have worked for eight months in Iraq as a journalist, witnessing the carnage on a daily basis, visiting the morgues with bodies and body parts piled into them, meeting family after family who had lost a loved one, or more ... Finally, we get an accurate figure that shows how immense the scale of the long drawn carnage really is.

The first Lancet Report, published on October 29, 2004, reported that there were 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths as the result of the US invasion and occupation. (Excess deaths are the difference between pre-invasion and post-invasion mortality rates.) Whenever I have given public presentations about the occupation, I have invariably found myself in a difficult position due to the lack of a more realistic and recent figure I can cite, knowing full well that the number was grossly higher than 100,000.

The least I could do was mention that Les Roberts, one of the authors of that report, is known to have said this past February that the number of Iraqi casualties could be over 300,000. And now, we know it is far higher, which merely confirms what most Iraqis already know.

In the context of the horror stories that have reached us over the three-plus years of the occupation, this latest figure is not nearly as shocking as when the first Lancet report was published in October of 2004. It has been abundantly clear since then that the number of Iraqis being killed by and because of the occupation has continued to increase exponentially.

The recent survey, like the first one, was conducted by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are based on interviews with a random sampling of households from across Iraq. This survey yielded the same estimate of deaths immediately following the occupation, as the first survey. It also found that 30% of the reported deaths are caused by the occupation forces.

This study is the only one, other than the first study published in The Lancet, that calculates mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. It is a technique of "cluster sampling" also used to estimate mortality caused by famines and after natural disasters.

The 2004 survey came under fire from pro-war critics and from the supposedly anti-war group Iraq Body Count (IBC) which currently claims a ridiculously low figure between 44 and 49,000 dead Iraqis. In the past, the figure generated by IBC has been quoted by George W. Bush.

The controversial results of the first survey were backed by Bradley Woodruff, a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education on January 27, 2005: "Les [Les Roberts, co-author of the first survey] has used, and consistently uses, the best possible methodology ... Indeed, the United Nations and the State Department have cited mortality numbers compiled by Mr. Roberts on previous conflicts as fact - and have acted on those results. [He] has studied mortality caused by war since 1992, having done surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization, in which he used methods akin to those of his Iraq study, received a great deal of attention. 'Tony Blair and Colin Powell have quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity,' he added."

Further underscoring the validity and authenticity of the survey methodology are two important facts: first, that the leg work has been conducted by eight Iraqi doctors and second, that the recent survey came up with the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the previous survey. Additionally, the figures are backed by official evidence as the greater majority of deaths were substantiated by death certificates.

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for several years, said that the survey method is "tried and true," and that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have." His view was backed by Sarah Leah Whitson at the Human Rights Watch in New York, who testified, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy."

rest of article at link.

 

[ZAMB]

This is an exerpt from an interview with one of the researchers. [whole interview at link] Interesting that they used the US govt's own methodology.

LES ROBERTS: You know, I don't want to sort of stoop to that level and start saying general slurs, but I just want to say that what we did, this cluster survey approach, is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war. And when UNICEF goes out and measures mortality in any developing country, this is what they do. When the U.S. government went at the end of the war in Kosovo or went at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. government measured the death rate, this is how they did it. And most ironically, the U.S. government has been spending millions of dollars per year, through something called the Smart Initiative, to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.

So, I think we used a very standard method. I think our results are couched appropriately in the relative imprecision of [inaudible]. It could conceivably be as few as 400,000 deaths. So we’re upfront about that. We don’t know the exact number. We just know the range, and we’re very, very confident about both the method and the results.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145222

 

[Kaka Tim]

Why is Teejay disputing these figures?

Is it becasue he is a statistical expert who has problems with the methodology?

No - its because, like George Bush and Tony Blair, he doesn't like what they say. And will sieze on any objections to them no matter how spurious.

Just as Bush and the Neo-cons vigourously disputed the mounting evidence of global warming because it couldn't be reconciled with their own ideology.

Just as the tobbacco producers have invested millions in media campaigns to counter the medical evidence against tobacco.

Nice company your keeping teejay.

But why has Tee Jay so upset about these figures - even going so far as to accuse the editor of the Lancet of behaving like the editor of a tabloid.

Its becasue TeeJay is - in his own small way - partly repsonsible for the half a million deaths. During the run up to the invasion he was on these boards constnatly arguing the 'humanitarian' case for war and still proffessed to believe in the existance of WMD long after even Blair had given up on it. By doing this he actively provided intellectual cover for the war from a 'liberal left' pespective (like arronovitch and the other 'euston manifesto' wankers).

The fact is that the lancet research is the most rigorous and statistically sound estimate of the number of deaths in Iraq yet carried out and is the same universally accepted methodology used for estimating death tolls in wars and disasters around the globe.

TeeJay - Whatever your handwringing bletherings about prmoting 'democracy' and 'human rights', the fact is that the invasion of Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Iraq (which, considering how shit the previous regime was, is some achivement).

And your intellectual dishonesty leaves you defending the whole disaster along the lines of justifiying 'humanitarian genocide'.

Sleep well war criminal.