left vs. left and the Iraq body count
One of the more disturbing things about the Iraq war is the amount of spin coming at us from all sides. As a liberal hawk, I'm terribly concerned with civilian casualties as a result of Rumsfelds' incompetence. It is of course relevant to the debate how many innocents die in Iraq. A war to free the nation from a genocidal dictator who isn't committing genocide at the moment which kills a hundred thousand people isn't creating a fantastic net gain, although arguably Hussein has one million four hundred thousand more points in that game.
The real debate sits between two left-wing sources; Iraqbodycount.net and the lancet study out of John Hopkins University. Iraqbodycount claims there have been between twenty and twenty five thousand civilian casualties in the war. There appears to be no breakdown of how many are caused by the insurgency but the bias of that site is clear; murders committed by insurgents are STILL the fault of the US. I'm not big on that argument. The Lancet study claims 100,000 people died....or at least that is what a lot of people think; but on closer inspection it appears to say something different.
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100,000 Dead—or 8,000
How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 29, 2004, at 3:49 PM PT
The authors of a peer-reviewed study, conducted by a survey team from Johns Hopkins University, claim that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war. Yet a close look at the actual study, published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet, reveals that this number is so loose as to be meaningless.
The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference—the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period—signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more fully:
We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.
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The real debate sits between two left-wing sources; Iraqbodycount.net and the lancet study out of John Hopkins University. Iraqbodycount claims there have been between twenty and twenty five thousand civilian casualties in the war. There appears to be no breakdown of how many are caused by the insurgency but the bias of that site is clear; murders committed by insurgents are STILL the fault of the US. I'm not big on that argument. The Lancet study claims 100,000 people died....or at least that is what a lot of people think; but on closer inspection it appears to say something different.
======================
100,000 Dead—or 8,000
How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 29, 2004, at 3:49 PM PT
The authors of a peer-reviewed study, conducted by a survey team from Johns Hopkins University, claim that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war. Yet a close look at the actual study, published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet, reveals that this number is so loose as to be meaningless.
The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference—the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period—signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more fully:
We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.
===================
posted by Robert Smith at 2:42 PM
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