Sunday, October 22, 2006
Correction
An alert reader has discovered an error in the last post on this blog (see below). The following comment was originally posted thus:
the ... discredited Lancet survey ...preposterously claimed 1 in 7 Iraqi adult males to have been slaughtered in fighting over the last 4 years.It should have read thus:
the ... discredited Lancet survey ...preposterously claimed 1 in 14 Iraqi adult males to have been slaughtered in fighting over the last 4 years.Obviously, the amended figure has no effect on the conclusion that the Lancet figure - which would have us believe that for every rugby team quantum of Iraqi males, more than one has died as a result of violence - is prepostorous.
My mistake was to absent-mindedly transfer the 7 in the "7%" figure cited at, inter alia, the Iraq Body Count web site instead of converting the figure to the accurate (1 in 14-15) ratio. Guilty as charged.
Apart from the citation of minor or inconsequential errors in criticisms of the Lancet Report there are a couple of other things that, even today and in the face of oodles of evidence, are being put forward as "evidence" of the report's credibility:
1) The unimpeachability of the standing of "The Lancet" and the academic standing of the Les Roberts, et al
Claiming credibility by virtue merely of academic qualifications is itself a strange thing in the era of Ward Churchill and Shane Warne Ph.D.
Regarding Lancet lead surveyor Les Roberts ("Ph.D. See!"), we have to keep in mind what he said after submitting his first Iraqi body count survey in time for the last US presidential election:
"I emailed (the study) in on September 30 under the condition that it came out before the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq. I was opposed to the war but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives."
Kind of speaks for itself, while shedding light on the timing of the latest survey release.
Regarding the Lancet people themselves, one only has to glance quickly at the editorial comment accompanying the Lancet report to see that the editor shares Roberts's "opposition" to the war.
2) The viability of the search methodology employed
The Iraq Body Count web site was set up by people who opposed the war in Iraq for the purpose of providing ammunition for such opposition.
Yet on the basis of confirmed media reports it concludes that the death count is less than one-tenth of this size of the Roberts' team conclusion. Roberts' team claims:
they sighted death certificates for more than 500 of the 600-plus deaths recorded in their study. Yet, as the IBC observes, this implies that there are at least half a million more death certificates in existence in Iraq than have been officially recorded. And that the deaths of nine out of every 10 people killed since the start of 2006 have gone unrecorded by any public body.Political consultant and statistician Stephen Moore is scathing in his criticism of the Roberts' team methodology:
(They) used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.He goes on to provide examples of the methodology employed by the likes of the UN and the BBC, and then cites this astonishing admission from Roberts, who he spoke to about the latest survey:
Neither would anyone else.
Dr. Roberts ... said that the appendices (of the report) were written by a student and should be ignored (!)And further:
Which led me to wonder what other sections of the survey should be ignored.
...This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents.It's all pretty damaging stuff, and it makes you wonder how and why the Lancet report ballooned into the public sphere and remains there in the eyes of a few.
But don't take my word for it--try using Google to find a survey that does not ask demographic questions.
Underlining it all, of course, is the warped assumption that violent death in Iraq must be blamed on the Bush administration. Including the sniper snuff murders we recently saw on CNN, today's mortar thrown into a market place, and the ambush killings of young Iraqi police recruits.
All such incidents and their calamitous toll are gleefully blamed on Bush by "war opponents".
