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Alex213
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: zappaisgod]
#6161220 - 10/12/06 07:42 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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There was a previous Lancet study from a year or so ago that was totally discredited on this very forum and elsewhere, quoting up to 100,000 deaths.
Nonsense. It was never discredited.
Two years ago, a study by Dr Les Roberts and a team from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, estimated that at least 100,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the war. This new survey, conducted by the same team and based on similar methodology but using a larger sample, suggests the situation is getting worse rather than better - a conclusion at odds with claims made by President Bush.
Dr Roberts said: "Yes [this finding was a surprise]. I didn't realise that things there were twice as bad as when we carried out our first survey in 2004. I did not know it was that much." Dr Roberts said he expected there would be many who would seek to undermine the report, as happened two years ago. But he said: "Let's have these people tell us what we have done wrong and what the true numbers are. Our study is pretty easy to verify. If they go to a graveyard in a small village and ask how many people are being put in the ground..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1842559.ece
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Phred
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Alex213]
#6161242 - 10/12/06 07:55 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Nonsense. It was never discredited.
Yeah it was. It was probably the biggest embarassment to the reputation of The Lancet in its history. Professional statisticians are still laughing over it.
This latest effort is -- almost unbelievably -- even MORE absurd than the first. As Seuss has pointed out, the way to determine how many people have actually died in a given time frame is not to phone less than two thousand people out of a total of population of twenty-six million and ask them to remember how many people they know died in the last three years.
A little bit of grade school arithmetic coupled with a quick check of widely-published annual mortality figures will easily show the number of 655,000 is absurd on the face of it.
Phred
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J4S0N
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Phred]
#6161566 - 10/12/06 10:17 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Arguing over numbers.. 50,000 is to many deaths. That blood is on the hands of everyone that supports the war. I know most of the supporters don't give a shit because they see themselves as being part of an unbeatable force. But their time will come. You can't get that decedent without it destroying you. Remember that the rest of the world now sees you are barbarian fighting over resources. Regardless of what 'noble' cause you conjure up, this is how the world and history will see you. so sad
-------------------- "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA
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Economist
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: J4S0N]
#6161738 - 10/12/06 11:20 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
J4S0N said: Arguing over numbers.. 50,000 is to many deaths. That blood is on the hands of everyone that supports the war.
See your mistake is completely ignoring how many people Saddam Hussein was killing through his mismanagement of Iraq.
According to many estimates, Saddam Hussein was killing between 10,000 and 50,000 people a year through a combination of starvation and complete lack of sanitation. (source: http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/steven.dav...bruary2006).pdf ) We know he found the money to buy solid-gold AK-47s and build tons of monuments and palaces, but finding the money to feed his people was somehow difficult.
This also doesn't take into account people he killed by other means, such as the reprisals following the first gulf war, or his senseless draining of the marshlands during the early 1990s. All told he killed around 200,000 people between 1991 and 1998. Similarly, if you extrapolate that to the logical end of his regime, it's perfectly reasonable to estimate that Hussein would have another 200,000 to 600,000 Iraqis.
Thus, 50,000 Iraqis is NOT too many, because it would be several magnitudes fewer deaths than Saddam's mismanagement and oppression would have caused anyway.
@Alex213
Look up the original 2004 study, the 95% confidence interval placed the number of deaths somewhere between 8000 deaths and 198000 deaths. That's a preposterous range. This one is a touch better, with the 95% confidence interval coming somewhere between 300,000 and 900,000, but the mere scope of the range is still disheartening in terms of convincing people of the accuracy of the study.
@Seuss
They did take some precautions when counting the deaths, they were able to get death certificates for more than 80% of the deaths they counted, so they didn't just call people on the phone. I would really recommend everyone checks out the study itself instead of relying on articles, it's only 8-pages long so it's not too bad.
As I pointed out above, however, there are some errors, such as the obvious discrepancy in pre-war deaths and the study's findings. They also used a poor dataset, comparing 14 months to 40. I also should point out that they were "unable to collect data" from one of the most peaceful provinces in the south-east, which could easily throw off their data.
I do agree with what Seuss said, this is a method that should be tried again, but when things calm down.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Economist]
#6161748 - 10/12/06 11:24 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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> I would really recommend everyone checks out the study itself instead of relying on articles, it's only 8-pages long so it's not too bad.
Good point. I was going off of what is repeated by the media rather than going to the source.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Fucknuckle
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Seuss]
#6166535 - 10/13/06 04:45 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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The bottom line here is this.......The US government is never going to admit they have lead a war that has killed 100,000 + civilians in Iraq...............But we all know they did.
How many is not the point the point is this war has been going on long enough that far to many people are dead from Bombs out of the night sky.
-------------------- What it is, is what it is my Brother. It is as it is, so suffer thru it.
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The_Red_Crayon
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Economist]
#6166608 - 10/13/06 05:06 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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It doesnt matter how many Saddam killed through mismanagement, The simple fact is Saddam had order, something that is severely lacking in the new coalition, people dont care how authoritarian their government is as long as the trains run on time and bombs dont go off in crowds every day.
Im surprised Saddam managed to keep his countries shit together so well aferting years of daily airstrike sorties, sanctions. The UN was probably the only reason he subsisted so well.
The situation in Iraq will become more and more unglued and the thousands of fighters who fought,trained and learned from Iraq will now set their sights as the jihad movement moves into high gear on other ME puppet governments that lack credibility with their own people will be first to fall.
As Condie Rice said herself "This is the birthpangs of a new middle east" Maybe not the subservient flower throwing type.
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luvdemshrooms
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: The_Red_Crayon]
#6168086 - 10/14/06 03:49 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Yes, orderly killings are much better.
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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Luddite
I watch Fox News


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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: luvdemshrooms]
#6168296 - 10/14/06 08:50 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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The Nazis had even more order than Saddam Hussein. I guess we should set up a Nazi government in Germany again.
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Basilides
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Luddite]
#6168319 - 10/14/06 09:08 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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That doesn't make sense because Germany already has order and rule of law.
--------------------
    "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
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Delta9Hippie
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Basilides]
#6168563 - 10/14/06 10:42 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Well, won't the history books be interesting, because as long as the powers that be of the US continue to be, this war will seem like it was an amazing 'arms-stretched-out' effort by the compassionate Bush to help liberate a people from what could have been the next Hitler.
What is going on in this world? Are we seriously arguing over a number of deaths of individual people? We need to step back from this aspect that we are all getting riled up about and see what's really going on. Why? Bush is not doing this to make us safer, granted I'm sure that in the next 25 years if Hussein had gone the scariest possible route, we would have some issues to deal with if we hadn't stayed on top, but that is not the reason for this war, it isn't a war on terror. There's terror in Colombia, a country that wants peace, but cant, and asks for help. But Colombia is not the point either. It is this...
We are there so that you dont have to pay more money at the pump, and so some filthy rich texans can get filthier. To keep the "american standard of life" in america. To fuck all other countries raw if that will in any way keep the US where it is. Is it right? That is up to you. That is the real question, do you value yourself and your glamorous life more than just some random dark skinned arab boy?
There are some that wish to find a balance with this, to not harm innocents, but to progress our country and others into an equaler world community, the problem is that the clear thinkers on this topic are few in government.
-------------------- "During evolutionary time, the avenues of possible progress have become progressively restricted, until today only one remains...Man...has been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution." Life begins the day you start a garden. Check out my trade list in My Journal...
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Alex213
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Phred]
#6168606 - 10/14/06 10:59 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Phred said:
Quote:
Nonsense. It was never discredited.
Yeah it was. It was probably the biggest embarassment to the reputation of The Lancet in its history. Professional statisticians are still laughing over it.
Phred
No it wasn't. In fact the same methodology is used in Darfur and I havn't heard anyone piss and moan about the results.
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Economist
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Alex213]
#6168621 - 10/14/06 11:05 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Alex213 said: No it wasn't. In fact the same methodology is used in Darfur and I havn't heard anyone piss and moan about the results.
That's because the methodology wasn't discredited. The individual case of the 2004 Lancet study, however, was.
As I've already posted, the 2004 study had problems with an ultra-large variance, as was evidenced by a 95% confidence interval of 8,000 to 198,000 deaths. While the interval is numerically smaller than the one in the 2006 study, as a percentage it's horrendous. The difference between 8,000 and 198,000 is over 2000%, compared to a difference of just 200% in the 2006 study.
They're getting better, but they're still not there yet.
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Alex213
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Economist]
#6177357 - 10/17/06 02:31 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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The 2006 study says people are dying at an even greater rate than the 2004 study suggested.
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Phred
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Alex213]
#6177653 - 10/17/06 07:33 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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And the 2006 "study" is an even bigger load of bollocks than the 2004 one, and that took some doing.
Even the anti-war organization Iraq Body Count -- whose own fatality figures are greatly inflated -- had no difficulty pointing out the absurdities of the conclusions in this latest bucket of bilge.
The publication of the first (2004) article by The Lancet was an embarassment to the magazine. But it pales in comparison to the embarassment this latest dreck will cause. When simple grade school arithmetic applied to open source reporting shows quite clearly the utter impossibility of this number being anywhere close to accurate (by at least an order of magnitude), it becomes VERY hard to attribute this blunder to simple incompetence and almost mandatory to attribute it to political motives. This is even more apparent when one observes that yet again the release of the report is within a month of an American election.
One can excuse the average news listener for not running a few simple calculations upon being presented with such a ludicrous figure. One cannot excuse the editors of a supposedly serious scientific journal for the same lapse.
Phred
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Economist
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Alex213]
#6180456 - 10/17/06 08:56 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Alex213 said: The 2006 study says people are dying at an even greater rate than the 2004 study suggested.
And I've pointed out that there are significant problems with the 2006 study as well. While the Confidence Interval was a bit better, there were other problems which cast a very serious doubt on the 2006 findings.
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Seuss
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Economist]
#6181343 - 10/18/06 05:25 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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In one of the lower level statistics classes that I took, we had to do a project where we polled people and analyzed the results using statistical methods. Once we were ready to hand in the work, the professor tossed out a surprise. Rather than being finished with the project, we were just getting started. He had all of the teams swap projects. Our new task was to rework the poll that another team had already done in such a way that we could drastically alter the results while maintaining validity of the methods used.
The poll my team was given related to the type of music that people liked. We redid the poll, but we were very selective in where we went to poll people. In our case, we polled people as they were leaving church services. The sample population looked random, but was not. We included professions and residence locations in the conclusion (to help show that the data was random/not biased), but left out the bit about the church. Who cares about ethics? Obviously, metal music didn't perform as well on the second poll, while gospel and pop got a large boost. If we had extrapolated for the entire state, then our lies would have been amplified even though the confidence interval would remain narrow.
I'm not saying that the polls in Iraq were done with the intention of generating large numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me. Even knowing the methodolgy used in a poll, one cannot be certain that the authors are being honest and ethical.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Alex213
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Phred]
#6181659 - 10/18/06 09:02 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Phred said: And the 2006 "study" is an even bigger load of bollocks than the 2004 one, and that took some doing.
Even the anti-war organization Iraq Body Count -- whose own fatality figures are greatly inflated -- had no difficulty pointing out the absurdities of the conclusions in this latest bucket of bilge.
The publication of the first (2004) article by The Lancet was an embarassment to the magazine. But it pales in comparison to the embarassment this latest dreck will cause. When simple grade school arithmetic applied to open source reporting shows quite clearly the utter impossibility of this number being anywhere close to accurate (by at least an order of magnitude), it becomes VERY hard to attribute this blunder to simple incompetence and almost mandatory to attribute it to political motives. This is even more apparent when one observes that yet again the release of the report is within a month of an American election.
One can excuse the average news listener for not running a few simple calculations upon being presented with such a ludicrous figure. One cannot excuse the editors of a supposedly serious scientific journal for the same lapse.
Phred
Come off it. The people running the Lancet arn't stupid. Neither are the people doing the study.
Incidentally the Iraq Body Count only reports deaths mentioned by (mostly western) media news sources. Obviously that's going to nowhere near the true number of deaths. How many deaths do you think the media reports on? One in a thousand? Less?
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Alex213
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Seuss]
#6181678 - 10/18/06 09:09 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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"I loved when President Bush said 'their methodology has been pretty well discredited,' " says Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report. "That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s04-woiq.html
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Economist
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Re: 655,000 Iraqis killed since 2003 [Re: Alex213]
#6181767 - 10/18/06 09:38 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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But again, you don't need to discredit the methodology in order to discredit the study.
Demographic analysis is solid, the Lancet studies aren't. The claims being made here are not congruent with the claims being made by President Bush.
I've yet to see anything that excuses them for comparing uneven data sets (14 months vs. 40), having no data from the Al-Muthanna province (which is one of the most peaceful), or the gross discrepancies between their estimated pre-war mortality rates, and what we know to be the actual pre-war mortality rates (see my earlier post in this thread).
It doesn't matter what methodology you use, if you use it poorly, and collect ineffective data, then you're going to get a bad answer. Garbage-in garbage-out doesn't have anything to do with methodology, and everthing to do with data collection.
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