Comments on: Learning to Count

By: …My heart’s in Accra » 5.4 million dead in Congo. Believe it or not, it could have been worse.

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:56:26 +0000

[...] in the AP story on the report – and he’s a figure who’s become quite controversial for his study in the Lancet of excess deaths after the US invasion of Iraq. Debunking the Roberts study has become a near full-time focus of some critics on the right, [...]

By: …My heart’s in Accra » New estimates on deaths in Iraq

…My heart’s in Accra » New estimates on deaths in Iraq — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:21:03 +0000

[...] An earlier post on similar cluster mortality studies in Iraq. [...]

By: …My heart’s in Accra » Is Israel a problem for the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:17:29 +0000

[...] BBC reports the death toll from the second intifada at roughly 4000. Iraq Body Count offers an estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq between 39,000 and 43,000 – a study from Johns Hopkins projects a much larger number, 100,000 by October 2004. Marc Herold at UNH projects between 3 and 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan from October 2001 – June 2004. Military casualties include 407 coalition casualties in Afghanistan and 2,564 coalition deaths in Iraq. Using the JHU study’s controversial (but, in my opinion, highly defensible) calculation, the Middle East has seen at least 111,000 military and civilian casualites in the past decade. [...]

By: …My heart’s in Accra » DRC - 3.8 million dead. Darfur?

…My heart’s in Accra » DRC - 3.8 million dead. Darfur? — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 01:42:40 +0000

[...] The same methodology was used in the Lancet study of civilian deaths in Iraq – Dr. Richard Garfield was an author on both studies and is an expert on the cluster sample survey methodology. The Iraq study, as you may recall, caused some controversy because its 95% confidence interval included a range of Iraqi civilian deaths from 8,000 to 194,000 deaths. That survey tallied results from approximately 900 Iraqi households – the DRC study, which has now been performed four times with similar results, most recently surveyed 19,500 households. [...]

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 01:20:50 +0000

Anyone curious about the Lancet study should check out Tim Lambert's blog Deltoid. He has a whole section devoted to posts debunking bad media coverage of the study.

By: cecile landman

cecile landman — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:47:07 +0000

hi ethan,
i think it is best to follow the ‘hospital-morgue-trail’ numbers.
for example info like this:
IRAQ: “Morgue can’t cope with numbers of bodies arriving on a daily basis, doctors say”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50700&SelectRegion=Middle_East&SelectCountry=IRAQ

By: Ethan

Ethan — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:22:51 +0000

Hi Stuart – the IBC figure, as I understand it, is the count of every death of Iraqis reported in two or more media outlets. I don’t know how – or if – it draws a distinction between combattants and bystanders – in a guerilla war, that’s a very difficult call to make. I agree with you – some of those deaths are going to involve combattants, even if IBC is attempting not to count them.

The Lancet report, which is the number I think has gone under-reported, is a pure statistical extrapolation based on interviewing households on deaths that occurred. I doubt the Lancet study is able to meaningfully distinguish between combattant and non-combattant death… that would require some percentage of households to acknowledge that their lost relatives were killed while participating in the insurgency, which is a hard question to ask in a door to door survery.

Your suggestion in the last paragraph is actually very consistent with the Lancet survey strategy. Because the survey asks people to list deaths in their households for two years prior to the invasion and for two years after, it should register deaths from Saddam’s government. In other words, the Lancet study is seeing a significant increase above that baseline.

By: Stuart Berman

Stuart Berman — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:37:09 +0000

Ethan,

I followed your link to the IBC site but I am still uncertain about this count. Does this 30,000 figure include people who may have been ‘enemy combatants’? I know that the figure used in the Palestinian conflict are stretched beyond credibility to include terrorists and ‘collaborators’ (having been murdered by other Palestinians) as Palestinian casualties.

I agree that civilian deaths are unacceptable where civilians are blameless (rather than active adversaries) and desire an accurate understanding.

By your own logic if you would add imputed deaths to these numbers is it also reasonable to deduct deaths not suffered any longer as the result of dismantling Hussein’s murderous regime?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 03:40:30 +0000

There was never great media coverage of Saddam’s massacres of his people, such as gasings of tens of thousands, and strapping people to trees as they cut them alive for the public to watch.

Or coverage of the 200,000 murdered Mongolians, 800,000 disfigured, in the past two decades, under nazi China. Or the hundreds of thousands of forced abortions, while they are awake, of Tibetans. Or 10,000 executions of political enemies.

What makes you think the public ever cared?

If they did, they would seek out injustice and fight it.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:58:52 +0000

Hi Jon – no doubt that IBC and Lancet are metaphysically different. The Lancet study was designed as a prelim study with the intent of carrying out a larger study at some point in the future (preferably when the country’s safer for researchers.) So there’s the possibility that the Lancet method can be used in the future.

I’m not saying that everyone who criticized the Lancet study was a right wing pundit. I am saying that I don’t think it got careful enough consideration and that it looks methodologically sound to me.