Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000
- Thread starter Barking_Mad
- Start date
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Barking_Mad said:
This is what I was saying earlier in the thread; Bush never questioned the figures and TeeJay has made no mention of them, yet he questions the veracity of this particular study. It's utterly shameless.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
One particularly sickening aspect of the study is the proportion of deaths directly attributed to coalition forces.
Around 30% if I'm reading it right.
That's getting on for 200,000 Iraqis directly killed by coalition forces.
Around 30% if I'm reading it right.
That's getting on for 200,000 Iraqis directly killed by coalition forces.
I'm no fan of any "statictics" but I have not much of a reason to shed doubt on the outcome of this research.
Maybe if people in the West would have access to ME media where the bloodshed dripped (and still drips) off TV screens and splashed all over the written media, they would be less "surprised" and not even consciously able to deny the facts. I'm relieved we have *finally* a reasonably trustworthy estimate of the mass murdering "liberation" of Iraq.
salaam.
Maybe if people in the West would have access to ME media where the bloodshed dripped (and still drips) off TV screens and splashed all over the written media, they would be less "surprised" and not even consciously able to deny the facts. I'm relieved we have *finally* a reasonably trustworthy estimate of the mass murdering "liberation" of Iraq.
salaam.
I guess then that, despite all the inherant problems involved with accurately collecting data in the midst of a civil war, the results of the study must stand as the most accurate representation yet of the additional deaths in Iraq attributable to the invasion and occupation.Kaka Tim said:
Which is very, very sad.
Woof
Andy the Don
Wise men say only fools..
WW1 - 4 years of high intensity warfare 908,371 British & Commonwealth military causalities
WW2 - 6 years of high intensity warfare 512,000 British & Commonwealth military & civilian causalities
Iraq - 3.25 years low intensity warfare 655,000 Iraqi casualties..
Now I realise that the Iraqi causality figure is excess deaths for the time period ie how many extra people be alive currently would it have not been for the 2003 invasion. But they start from a pre invasion base rate about 5.5 Iraqi deaths per thousand, which is a very low figure about the same as say Australia. That is after ten + years of sanctions & humanitarian disaster. Which is a very low base rate. Therefore if explorate from this figure you would get a much higher figure than you would should you explorate from higher base figure. I have no degree in statistics, but it is studied in accountancy & I have a basic working knowledge. I am sure that any professional statisticians on here could drive a coach & horses through my arguments, but to me the figure seems unfeasibly large.
WW2 - 6 years of high intensity warfare 512,000 British & Commonwealth military & civilian causalities
Iraq - 3.25 years low intensity warfare 655,000 Iraqi casualties..
Now I realise that the Iraqi causality figure is excess deaths for the time period ie how many extra people be alive currently would it have not been for the 2003 invasion. But they start from a pre invasion base rate about 5.5 Iraqi deaths per thousand, which is a very low figure about the same as say Australia. That is after ten + years of sanctions & humanitarian disaster. Which is a very low base rate. Therefore if explorate from this figure you would get a much higher figure than you would should you explorate from higher base figure. I have no degree in statistics, but it is studied in accountancy & I have a basic working knowledge. I am sure that any professional statisticians on here could drive a coach & horses through my arguments, but to me the figure seems unfeasibly large.
Under 70,000 British civilians died in the second world war, the war on the home front was not "high intensity" with the exception of some major bombing raids.Andy the Don said:
Iraq had a remarkably good health system, and the oil for food programme was making a significant difference to mortality by the time the invasion happened.
Andy the Don
Wise men say only fools..
slaar said:
After twelve years of sanctions the Iraqi health system had become very degraded. What I am questioning is the pre 2003 invasion base rate of 5.5 deaths per thousand Iraqis. It appears to me to be very low for a country which had suffered twelve years of punative sanctions. A high percentage of the funds raised by the oil for food UN programme went direct to the ruling elite.
Andy the Don
Wise men say only fools..
From http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mot1203.pdf
States that in 2002 the UK crude death rate per thousand for males 9.9 per thousand & for females was 10.5 per thousand..
Now are we saying that pre invasion Iraq had a lower crude per thousand death rate than the UK..??
States that in 2002 the UK crude death rate per thousand for males 9.9 per thousand & for females was 10.5 per thousand..
Now are we saying that pre invasion Iraq had a lower crude per thousand death rate than the UK..??
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
And isn't the study using the stats for deaths from violence - i.e not from malnutrition, disease etc?
And what the comparison for death rates in britain during WW2 compared to IRaq today are totally sprurious. Briatin was not under a violent occupation and riven by riven by sectarin struggle during that period. Nazi occupied yugoslavia might be a more valid comparison.
And what the comparison for death rates in britain during WW2 compared to IRaq today are totally sprurious. Briatin was not under a violent occupation and riven by riven by sectarin struggle during that period. Nazi occupied yugoslavia might be a more valid comparison.
If you know so little about the report that you didn't even know this very basic fact about the figure it begs the question - what is the point of trying to debate it any greater depth with you?
I'd rather preach in favour of war against vile dictatorships than preach inaction. Blather on about 'warmongers' if you want but this thread is about a specific study and a specific number it produced. It is almost as if you'd rather make personal attacks on me and wibble on about war crimes than actually discuss the subject of the thread.
Now we know why - you know fuck all about this study, you haven't got the faintest clue.
Why don't you go and read it?
I'd rather preach in favour of war against vile dictatorships than preach inaction. Blather on about 'warmongers' if you want but this thread is about a specific study and a specific number it produced. It is almost as if you'd rather make personal attacks on me and wibble on about war crimes than actually discuss the subject of the thread.
Now we know why - you know fuck all about this study, you haven't got the faintest clue.
Why don't you go and read it?
Imagine that! The mortality rate rapidly increases to more than double its normal rate, which change in rate just happens to coincide with an invasion, occupation, insurgency and civil war. And the bounders try to turn this coincidental correlation into a casual connection. Well I never.TeeJay said:
If the invasion hadn't happened, an extra 600,000 people would have blown each other up anyway. It's well known that Iraqis are prone to engaging in mass murder every so often.
Incidentally, has anybody noticed the reaction from iraq body count:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php
It basically amounts to "that's an awful lot - it couldn't be true". Their claim that the sample must have been unrepresentative comes with no evidence or argument - which displays quite some cheek imho.
It puzzles me why they would choose to quibble with such a study. They could (and indeed you would expect that an honest person should) say
"yep, this shows that the international media that we monitor specifically reports about 10% of the deaths. That's not surprising - "man shot in Iraqi village by unknown assailants" isn't exactly headline news during a war."
So, does anybody know why they set out to undermine proper, peer-reviewed scientific research?
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php
It basically amounts to "that's an awful lot - it couldn't be true". Their claim that the sample must have been unrepresentative comes with no evidence or argument - which displays quite some cheek imho.
It puzzles me why they would choose to quibble with such a study. They could (and indeed you would expect that an honest person should) say
"yep, this shows that the international media that we monitor specifically reports about 10% of the deaths. That's not surprising - "man shot in Iraqi village by unknown assailants" isn't exactly headline news during a war."
So, does anybody know why they set out to undermine proper, peer-reviewed scientific research?
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
I wondered about that too.
Crooked Timber also had a story a day or two ago about some Harvard blog trying to imply that the Iraqi doctors who did the actual survey were faking.
It got taken down yesterday with profuse apologies from the people running the site.
Still, I expect there is a think-tank job awaiting the guy who came up with that.
Crooked Timber also had a story a day or two ago about some Harvard blog trying to imply that the Iraqi doctors who did the actual survey were faking.
It got taken down yesterday with profuse apologies from the people running the site.
Still, I expect there is a think-tank job awaiting the guy who came up with that.
Let's just quote that in full, just in case the same people who have refused to read the actual Lancet report also refuse to read the IBC press release:gurrier said:
***
Iraq Body Count Press Release 16 October 2006
Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates
Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty
Summary
A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:
1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.
If these assertions are true, they further imply:
* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.
In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.
***
Anyone want to actually engage with some/any of these points?
Yet more cold water:
Lancet Iraq Study Flawed: Death Toll Too High
link: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0610/S00436.htm
"Researchers at Oxford University and Royal Holloway, University of London have found serious flaws in the survey of Iraqi deaths published last week in the Lancet.
Sean Gourley and Professor Neil Johnson of the physics department at Oxford University and Professor Michael Spagat of the economics department of Royal Holloway, University of London contend that the study’s methodology is fundamentally flawed and will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq.
* The study suffers from "main street bias" by only surveying houses that are located on cross streets next to main roads or on the main road itself. However many Iraqi households do not satisfy this strict criterion and had no chance of being surveyed.
* Main street bias inflates casualty estimates since conflict events such as car bombs, drive-by shootings artillery strikes on insurgent positions, and market place explosions gravitate toward the same neighborhood types that the researchers surveyed.
* This obvious selection bias would not matter if you were conducting a simple survey on immunisation rates for which the methodology was designed.
* In short, the closer you are to a main road, the more likely you are to die in violent activity. So if researchers only count people living close to a main road then it comes as no surprise they will over count the dead.
During email discussions between the Oxford-Royal Holloway team and the Johns Hopkins team conducted through a reporter for Science, for an article to be published October 20, it became clear that the authors of the study had not implemented a clear, well-defined and justifiable methodology. The Oxford-Royal Holloway team therefore believes that the scientific community should now re-analyze this study in depth."
The team can be reached for comment at;
Gourley: s.gourley1 @ physics.ox.ac.uk mobile:+44 (0) 7733113558
Johnson: n.johnson @ physics.ox.ac.uk
Spagat: M.Spagat @ rhul.ac.uk
Lancet Iraq Study Flawed: Death Toll Too High
link: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0610/S00436.htm
"Researchers at Oxford University and Royal Holloway, University of London have found serious flaws in the survey of Iraqi deaths published last week in the Lancet.
Sean Gourley and Professor Neil Johnson of the physics department at Oxford University and Professor Michael Spagat of the economics department of Royal Holloway, University of London contend that the study’s methodology is fundamentally flawed and will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq.
* The study suffers from "main street bias" by only surveying houses that are located on cross streets next to main roads or on the main road itself. However many Iraqi households do not satisfy this strict criterion and had no chance of being surveyed.
* Main street bias inflates casualty estimates since conflict events such as car bombs, drive-by shootings artillery strikes on insurgent positions, and market place explosions gravitate toward the same neighborhood types that the researchers surveyed.
* This obvious selection bias would not matter if you were conducting a simple survey on immunisation rates for which the methodology was designed.
* In short, the closer you are to a main road, the more likely you are to die in violent activity. So if researchers only count people living close to a main road then it comes as no surprise they will over count the dead.
During email discussions between the Oxford-Royal Holloway team and the Johns Hopkins team conducted through a reporter for Science, for an article to be published October 20, it became clear that the authors of the study had not implemented a clear, well-defined and justifiable methodology. The Oxford-Royal Holloway team therefore believes that the scientific community should now re-analyze this study in depth."
The team can be reached for comment at;
Gourley: s.gourley1 @ physics.ox.ac.uk mobile:+44 (0) 7733113558
Johnson: n.johnson @ physics.ox.ac.uk
Spagat: M.Spagat @ rhul.ac.uk
Points 3 and 5 are simply saying "golly this study says things are awful bad".TeeJay said:
Points 1,2 and 4 are simply pointing out the well known fact that government mortality records and other statistics only record a fraction of the deaths during a war. It's a consequence of the fact that during wars, health service statistics and record keeping departments tend to get fairly low priority. It's especially unsurprising when the occupying army dissolved much of the state infrastructure and particularly unsurprising when the effective government, the extremely rich and powerful occupying power, has a particular interest in underplaying the mortality rate. It is due to the fact that such "public surveillance measures" so consistently fail during wars, that people of a scientific bent who are really interested in knowing such things, have come up with far, far more accurate ways of measuring them.
In short, the objections above are mere appeals to ignorance and the fact that the result is surprising when compared to the propaganda that we have been subjected to.
That's just rubbish. They do not imply this. It is far more likely that they simply imply the well known fact that the Iraqi government has been in a state of chaos since the invasion. This does not imply a conspiracy at all, just a well known fact. Claiming that a "perfectly coordinated" conspiracy is a logical consequence of the disparity of numbers between the official records and the scientific study is just terrible reasoning.TeeJay said:
How many free hospital beds are there in Iraq? How many hospitals? Are there community medical workers? - unless you know the answers to these questions, you can't even begin to evaluate how 'bizzare' and 'self-destructive' the behaviour of the injured was. Do you know what percentage of casualties in the DRC were treated in hospital?TeeJay said:
For a start, losing 10% of the adult male population is terrible, but it's not as if you'd notice it by walking down the street, so the term 'decimation' is a bit much. Secondly, it's just dishonest to say that there has been an "utter failure" to notice this. Everybody knows that there is a war on in Iraq, this study just reveals that the various agencies monitoring mortality rates under-estimate the numbers, as they always do in wars.TeeJay said:
Once again, this is just dishonest. It does not imply a failure to report events of a similar scale to the invasion. It implies a failure to report a mortality rate on a similar scale to that during the invasion. That failure is completely and utterly unsurprising too. Low-intensity counter-insurgency warfare doesn't go in for big spectacles that are obvious to the media.TeeJay said:
Y'see this is just all wrong. If you think there has been a sampling bias, you need to point it out and present your evidence for it. If you can not find a sampling bias, the rational thing to do is to accept the findings until such time as evidence of such a bias is presented through a rigourous peer-reviewed publication.TeeJay said:
Wow, that one's really rubbish too. Fairly sickening misuse of their "Researchers at Oxford University" badges though. Particularly poor form to see phsyicists using their training to give scientific credence to this objection, despite the fact that this is absolutely nothing to do with their area of expertise.TeeJay said:
I just googled "main street bias" - exactly one result (somebody's address). http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q="Main+street+bias"&btnG=Search
The existence of "main street bias" is merely a conjecture. It might exist, but they offer no evidence for it. They suggest no percentage by which one's proximity to a main street might affect one's probability of mortality.
That's the worst bit. If they think there was a sampling bias, the obvious thing to call for is another study to be carried out without the claimed bias in the sample. Then they'd have a chance to collect some evidence for their "main street bias" conjecture and we could all get a better idea how many people have actually died due to the invasion. Simply casting an evidence free general purpose aspersion on the methodology of the researchers and calling for scepticism about the findings based upon such armchair speculation is just a rubbish way to behave.TeeJay said:
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
TeeJay said:
You know what? I dont read the source material for every scientiifc study that makes the news.
And do you know what else? I dont consider myself any sort of expert on scientific methodology and statistics.
So this leaves me - and 99.9% of the population - trusting such information on the basis that it appears in a peer reviewed serious academic journal.
It is quite clear that those who are attacking this study are doing so not becasue of a concern over the validity of the method but becasue they are the same people responsible for the disaster of Iraq.
Tee Jay - I feel it necessary to point out to people on these boards that you were an active supporter of the war and were still trying to convince us of the existence of WMD long after everyone bar pbman and tony blair had given up.
This, and the vociferousness with which you have atatcked this study and your evasisveness in answering other people's points (i.e do you dispute the estimates for the death rates in sudan?) all indictes someone who has a very definite agenda and who is not arguing form the POV of intellectual honesty.
The fact remains that the two most rigourous and sceintificly sound attempts to assess the war related death rate have both shown figures way above what the politicians have been prepared to admit.
Yeah - people can nit pick with the methodology and there are obvious difficulties of carrying out research in war zone. But it is the same interenationally recognised methodology that is used in disaster and conflict regions throughout the globe. Until I see a credible rubbishing of the report by independant, peer reviewed statisticians (as oppsoed to George Bush) I see no reason to doubt the conclusion of the studies - 100s of thousands dead as a direct result of a war you actively supported.
'the doctors are lying' 'the lancet are acting like a tabloid' 'the respondents are lying' - its a desperate smeer attempt to exclude these studies from public debate by those who have comitted crimes of mass murder and whoslesale deception - and you're an active part of it.
So two physicists and an economist throw up a conjecture that's not adequately documented, in a field of study unrelated to their own, and then proceed to say this totally invalidates a study carried out by some of the world's top epidemiologists? I'm convinced.
Just as one tiny counter-conjecture, it may surprise the authors to know, but people who do not live on main roads or in markets often go there during the day to shop. It's not just people who live on the main road who get caught up.
Just as one tiny counter-conjecture, it may surprise the authors to know, but people who do not live on main roads or in markets often go there during the day to shop. It's not just people who live on the main road who get caught up.
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