Talk:Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties/Archive 1

message: However, the politics of the authors and reviewers is demonstrated by the interpretation that "air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths", even though this conclusion is based upon a survey of laymen, when expert investigations would be needed to determine which deaths were caused by coalition munitions, and which from "friendly" fire of motars and anti-aircraft shells and missles. Iraqi weapons fire was notoriously and carelessly ineffective and inaccurate
This statement is ridiculous. The report is pointing out that most deaths occured from air strikes, not ground fighting, which is an easy distinction to make. Rls 01:22, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
:How about a compromise, something along the lines of: [It has been speculated by critics that an unknown proportion of deaths may have been caused by] "friendly" fire of mo[r]tars and anti-aircraft shells and miss[i]les. Iraqi weapons fire was notoriously and carelessly ineffective and inaccurate. ? Rls 01:28, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
::That sounds good.  But also eliminate the hyperbole about Lancet, they really lowered their standards on this one.--Silverback 02:30, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
:::OK, I'll add it. But the Lancet is a very prestigious journal -- certainly the top medical journal in the UK, and arguably the world. They were very keen to cover their backs on this paper and made sure it was heavily reviewed by a large number of experts in the field. Rls 12:19, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
::::Let's not use the phrase 'friendly fire' too much - if it was a US bomb-strike, then it was a US bomb-strike. One must not assume that it is in any sense 'friendly'.
::::Johnbibby 16:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Politics

message: Silverback, please show how you worked out that "there is an 8.8% probability that the number of excess fatalities were between 95,000 and 105,000" -- a quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that this is way off. Anyway, this is a strange range to pick. A more interesting statistic would be the range for 50% or 25% accuracy. Rls 19:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I pick the range, because a lot of people using this study, just want to use the 100,000 figure, implying that the likely result is close to this figure.  Not only is the 100,000 figure a poor representation of the result, even a range bracketing that figure is a poor representation as demonstrated by my calculation based on the normal distribution.  I calculated this probability in excel, the formulas follow:
 =+NORMDIST(95,98,45,TRUE)
 =+NORMDIST(105,98,45,TRUE)
These return the cummulative probabilities at 95 and 105, which are .4734 and .5618 respectively.  You difference these two to get the probability for the range: .0883.  It is just as valid to discuss the probability of the middle of the range as it is at either extreme.  I think someone earlier (was it you?) disputed the flatness of the bell curve, this calculation shows that it is much flatter that most people and evidently you also, would suspect from the way this study is presented.--Silverback 07:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Where did the 45 come from? (Will be away from Wikipedia for a week or so, haven't got time to check your calculation yet) Rls 13:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the standard deviation, half of the two SDs used for the original range.--Silverback 17:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Statistics

message: Although the death toll is light compared to the immense infant mortality that former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright estimated was caused by the UN sanctions. -- this should not be in this article. It seems to be an argument over whether the invasion of Iraq was justified, which should not be part of this article. There are several others where this could be discussed. Rls 13:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is questionable, but it balances the immediately previous phrases which apparently were aimed at justifying opposition to the war. "There were apparent political biases at work as well. The results of the study were inconvenient to many supporters of the war, since such a heavy death toll could raise questions regarding the humanitarian justifications"  Words like "heavy" are relative, and if the article could raise questions about the humanitarian justifications, those quite considerable humanitarian concerns should perhaps be included for balance.--Silverback 17:49, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I don't think the additional deaths applies here, because the Secretary's statements were from several years earlier. The Oil for Food program was tolerated despite its evident corruption because some assistance was reaching these people and reducing the infant mortality rate.  There were vaccination programs etc.  The study also could not capture the episodic and geographically concentrated nature of Saddam's attrocities, since it did not look back far enough in time, and would have to sample geographically at a high enough resolution to put several samples in the specific areas where the mass murders took place.  Les Roberts admission of bias is quite remarkable, he wears it almost like a badge of honor.  This study's poor quality and biased rushed publication is a black mark on the the Lancet's reputation. Since the bias admissions are being cited in the criticism section, I've modified the language to make it clear that the Roberts quote is being offered in support of that criticism and is in fact an admission of it. --Silverback 08:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Justification

message: Some people have proposed that as a rule of thumb there are two to three times as many injuries/wounds as there are deaths in these kinds of conflicts.   It occurred to me that the researchers missed an opportunity to perform a sanity check on their research results by not also inquiring about injuries and wounds,  further more, they would not have to rely just upon recollection or the respondants interpretation, since many injuries and would leave traces such as scars and disabilities that could be confirmed.--Silverback 20:41, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  missed opportunity? 

message: "The main debate in the media in the U.S. and U.K. focused on whether 98,000 (95% CI 8000–194,000) excess Iraqis were killed as a result of coalition intervention, and that statistic excludes all the Fallujah data. The authors estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected happened after the invasion outside of Fallujah. Had the Fallujah sample been included, the survey's estimate would have been of an excess of about 298,000 deaths, with 200,000 concentrated in the 3% of Iraq around Fallujah (Roberts et al p.5). The study found that mortality rates had increased about 2.5 times since the invasion (with a 95% CI 1.6-4.2) including the Fallujah data, and 1.5 times (95% CI 1.1-2.3) excluding the Fallujah data (from 0.5% to 0.79% per year). According to the article, violence was responsible for most of the extra deaths whether or not the Fallujah data was excluded, with coalition airstrikes the main cause of those violent deaths."
The last sentence is particularly confusing. When "Falluja data was excluded" there were 21 violent deaths. Only 9 of these were attributed to the coalition. How could "coalition airstrikes" be the "main cause of those violent deaths" "whether or not the Fallujah data was excluded" when the coalition in its entirety, let alone just by airstrikes, didn't even account for half the deaths when Fallujah was excluded?
The article seems misleading itself on this point, so perhaps one could argue that it is true "according to the article" but just not according to the data. However, the paragraph is  misleading in any case. 68.45.226.214 04:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing paragraph 

message: I am concerned that this edit does not properly balance opposing points of view.  I object to the wholesale removal of sourced statements crucial to the central points of the article without even copying them here to the talk page.  Accordingly, I am adding a  tag to this article.  Please discuss the issue here, and do not remove the tag until a consensus is reached.  Thank you. Starcare 19:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess it's my fault for just trying to scrape by with an edit summary instead of taking the time to discuss it here. My main gripe with the paragraph was the "at least", which I tried to point out is meaningless in a statistical/epidemiological sense. Even if it were some sort of reference to the lower confidence limit, that's way down, the 100,000 and 285,000 are the most likely numbers, i.e. the centers of the confidence intervals, not the "at least". I think what was trying to be said was that the best estimate was being reported as 100,000, when actually that was a conservative best estimate, the actual best estimate without dropping Fallujah would be 285,000. No "at least" involved. But then the "at least" quote from Roberts was a problem, since he certainly knows his business, and it'd look a bit weird for me to be correcting him, so I went to the link on zmag which quoted him in the independent, so i went to the independent and searched for his letter they cited (geez they have a buggy search) as well as searching for it via google, in order to see exactly what he said and maybe it was misquoted, and got nowhere in either place, so I just gave it up and cut the paragraph since the "at least" bit was wrong, I'd stake my life that the Roberts quote with the "at least" quote is wrong, I'm in no position to be publicly contradicting Roberts even if I'd stake my life that his "at least" quote is wrong, I couldn't find the original quote to make sure that that's what he said anyway, and the whole Fallujah/conservative bit was discussed below, after all. So that's the story, no POV issues as far as I'm concerned as far as pointing out that the 100,000 was a conservative modification of the plain and simple estimate. Gzuckier 22:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see a problem with that-no matter what Roberts said-the 100,000 figure can't be at least in a statistical sense-even if common sense tells you that the true figure is very likely to be much higher. Thus I think that, regardless of quotes by Roberts (true or not) removing the at least is more encyclopedic.Felix-felix 07:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV concern