Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Lancet aveva ragione

Anzi, forse è stato anche troppo cauto...
Namib
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Z Magazine Online Commentary - February 2006
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html
Burying The Lancet Report
by Nicolas J. S. Davies
Over a year ago an international team of epidemiologists, headed by Les
Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, completed a "cluster
sample survey" of civilian casualties in Iraq. Its findings contradicted
central elements of what politicians and journalists had presented to
the U.S. public and the world. After excluding any possible statistical
anomalies, they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died
in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and
occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become
the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period. Their most
significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent
deaths were caused by "coalition" forces using "helicopter gunships,
rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," and that almost half (48
percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8.
When the team's findings were published in the Lancet, the official
journal of the British Medical Association, they caused quite a stir and
it seemed that the first step had been taken toward a realistic
accounting of the human cost of the war. The authors made it clear that
their results were approximate. They discussed the limitations of their
methodology at length and emphasized that further research would be
invaluable in giving a more precise picture.
A year later, we do not have a more precise picture. Soon after the
study was published, U.S. and British officials launched a concerted
campaign to discredit its authors and marginalize their findings without
seriously addressing the validity of their methods or presenting any
evidence to challenge their conclusions. Today the continuing aerial
bombardment of Iraq is still a dark secret to most Americans and the
media present the same general picture of the war, focusing on secondary
sources of violence.
Roberts has been puzzled and disturbed by this response to his work,
which stands in sharp contrast to the way the same governments responded
to a similar study he led in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2000.
In that case, he reported that about 1.7 million people had died during
22 months of war and, as he says, "Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted
those results time and time again without any question as to the
precision or validity." In fact the UN Security Council promptly called
for the withdrawal of foreign armies from the Congo and the U.S. State
Department cited his study in announcing a grant of $10 million for
humanitarian aid.
Roberts conducted a follow-up study in the Congo that raised the
fatality estimate to three million and Tony Blair cited that figure in
his address to the 2001 Labor Party conference. In December 2004 Blair
dismissed the epidemiological team's work in Iraq, claiming, "Figures
from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals
there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is."
This statement by Blair is particularly interesting because the Iraqi
Health Ministry reports, whose accuracy he praised, have confirmed the
Johns Hopkins teams conclusion that aerial attacks by "coalition"
forces are the leading cause of civilian deaths. One such report was
cited by Nancy Youssef in the Miami Herald of September 25, 2004 under
the headline "U.S. Attacks, Not Insurgents, Blamed for Most Iraqi
Deaths." The Health Ministry had been reporting civilian casualty
figures based on reports from hospitals, as Blair said, but it was not
until June 2004 that it began to differentiate between casualties
inflicted by "coalition" forces and those from other causes. From June
10 to September 10 it counted 1,295 civilians killed by U.S. forces and
their allies and 516 killed in "terrorist" operations. Health Ministry
officials told Youssef that the "statistics captured only part of the
death toll," and emphasized that aerial bombardment was largely
responsible for the higher numbers of deaths caused by the "coalition."
The breakdown (72 percent U.S.) is remarkably close to that attributed
to aerial bombardment in the Lancet survey (79 percent).
BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson, in another Health Ministry report
covering July 1, 2004 to January 1, 2005, cited 2,041 civilians killed
by U.S. and allied forces versus 1,233 by "insurgents" (only 62 percent
U.S.). Then something strange happened. The Iraqi Health Minister's
office contacted the BBC and claimed, in a convoluted and confusing
statement, that their figures had somehow been misrepresented. The BBC
issued a retraction and details of deaths caused by "coalition" forces
have been notably absent from subsequent Health Ministry reports.
Official and media criticism of Roberts's work has focused on the size
of his sample, 988 homes in 33 clusters distributed throughout the
country, but other epidemiologists reject the notion that this is
controversial.
Michael O'Toole, the director of the Center for International Health in
Australia, says: "That's a classical sample size. I just don't see any
evidence of significant exaggeration.... If anything, the deaths may
have been higher because what they are unable to do is survey families
where everyone has died."
David Meddings, a medical officer with the Department of Injuries and
Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization, said that surveys
of this kind always have uncertainty, but "I dont think the authors
ignored that or understated. Those cautions I don't believe should be
applied any more or less stringently to a study that looks at a
politically sensitive conflict than to a study that looks at a pill for
heart disease."
Roberts has also compared his work in Iraq to other epidemiological
studies: "In 1993, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control randomly
called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had
developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the
developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough
sample. It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press
every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the
mechanism of death is their armed forces."
The campaign to discredit Roberts, the Johns Hopkins team, and the
Lancet used the same methods that the U.S. and British governments have
employed consistently to protect their monopoly on "responsible"
storytelling about the war. By dismissing the study's findings out of
hand, U.S. and British officials created the illusion that the authors
were suspect or politically motivated and discouraged the media from
taking them seriously. This worked disturbingly well. Even opponents of
the war continue to cite much lower figures for civilian casualties and
innocently attribute the bulk of them to Iraqi resistance forces or
"terrorists."
The figures most often cited for civilian casualties in Iraq are those
collected by Iraqbodycount, but its figures are not intended as an
estimate of total casualties. Its methodology is to count only those
deaths that are reported by at least two "reputable" international media
outlets in order to generate a minimum number that is more or less
indisputable. Its authors know that thousands of deaths go unreported in
their count and say they cannot prevent the media misrepresenting their
figures as an actual estimate of deaths.
Beyond the phony controversy regarding the methodology of the Lancet
report, there is one issue that does cast doubt on its findings. This is
the decision to exclude the cluster in Fallujah from its computations
due to the much higher number of deaths that were reported there (even
though the survey was completed before the widely reported assault on
the city in November 2004). Roberts wrote, in a letter to the
Independent, "Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we
did a survey estimating that 285,000 people have died due to the first
18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least
100,000."
The dilemma he faced was this: in the 33 clusters surveyed, 18 reported
no violent deaths (including one in Sadr City), 14 other clusters
reported a total of 21 violent deaths and the Fallujah cluster reported
52 violent deaths. This last number is conservative because, as the
report stated, "23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or
permanently abandoned. Neighbors interviewed described widespread death
in most of the abandoned homes but could not give adequate details for
inclusion in the survey."
Leaving aside this last factor, there were three possible
interpretations of the results from Fallujah. The first, and indeed the
one Roberts adopted, was that the team had randomly stumbled on a
cluster of homes where the death toll was so high as to be totally
unrepresentative and therefore not relevant to the survey. The second
possibility was that this pattern among the 33 clusters, with most of
the casualties falling in one cluster and many clusters reporting zero
deaths, was an accurate representation of the distribution of civilian
casualties in Iraq under "precision" aerial bombardment. The third
possibility was that the Fallujah cluster was atypical, but not
sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study, so that
the number of excess deaths was somewhere between 100,000 and 285,000.
Without further research, there is no way to determine which of these
three possibilities is correct.
No new survey of civilians killed by "coalition" forces has been
produced since the Health Ministry report last January, but there is
strong evidence that the air war has intensified during this period.
Independent journalists have described the continuing U.S. assault on
Ramadi as "Fallujah in slow motion." Smaller towns in Anbar province
have been targets of air raids for the past several months, and towns in
Diyala and Baghdad provinces have also been bombed. Seymour Hersh has
covered the "under-reported" air war in the New Yorker and writes that
the current U.S. strategy is to embed U.S. Special Forces with Iraqi
forces to call in air strikes as U.S. ground forces withdraw, opening
the way for heavier bombing with even less media scrutiny (if that is
possible).
One ignored feature of the survey's results is the high number of
civilian casualties reported in Fallujah in August 2004. It appears that
U.S. forces took advantage of the media focus on Najaf at that time to
conduct very heavy attacks against Fallujah. This is perhaps a clue to
the strategy by which they have conducted much of the air war. The
heaviest bombing and aerial assault at any given time is likely to be
somewhere well over the horizon from any well-publicized U.S. military
operation, possibly involving only small teams of Special Forces on the
ground. But cynical military strategy does not let the media off the
hook for their failure to find out what is really going on and tell the
outside world about it. Iraqi and other Arab journalists can still
travel through most of the country and news editors should pay close
attention to their reports from areas that are too dangerous for Western
reporters.
A second feature of the epidemiologists findings that has not been
sufficiently explored is the one suggested above by Michael O'Toole.
Since their report establishes that aerial assault and bombardment is
the leading cause of violent death in Iraq and, since a direct hit by a
500 pound Mark 82 bomb will render most houses uninhabitable, any survey
that disregards damaged, uninhabited houses is sure to underreport
deaths. This should be taken into account by any follow-up studies.
Thanks to Roberts, his international team, Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health, and the editorial board of the Lancet, we have a clearer
picture of the violence taking place in Iraq than that presented by
"mainstream" media. Allowing for 16 months of the air war and other
deaths since the completion of the survey, we have to estimate that
somewhere between 185,000 and 700,000 people have died as a direct
result of the war. Coalition forces have killed anywhere from 70,000 to
500,000 of them, including 30,000 to 275,000 children under the age of
15.
Roberts has cautioned me to remember that whether someone is killed by a
bomb, a heart attack during an air strike, or a car accident fleeing the
chaos, those who initiated the war and who "stay the course" bear the
responsibility.
As someone who has followed this war closely, I find the results of the
study to be consistent with what I have seen gradually emerging as the
war has progressed, based on the work of courageous, mostly independent
reporters, and glimpses through the looking glass as more and more
cracks appear in the "official story."
[Nicolas J.S. Davies is indebted to Medialens, a British media watchdog
group, for some of the material in this report. This article was first
published by Online Journal.]

 
Grazie. Finalmente una spiegazione chiara dello studio.
Am.

their allies and 516 killed in "terrorist" operations.
E questa e' una puttanata.  Infatti questo fantomatico rapporto non
parlava di "civilians" ma di "Iraqis". Non esiste infatti nessun metodo
per distinguere un civile da un terrorista/guerrigliero.
Oltretutto il numero 1295 riguarda tanto le forze alleate ***QUANTO LA
POLIZIA IRACHENA***.
Da notare che nello stesso periodo 432 soldati americani sono morti. Il
numero di poliziotti iracheni invece non e' conosciuto.
Taglio il resto delle puttanate.
-Stefano

 -Stefano
Si apprezza che non hai piu' il coraggio di attaccare il metodo di The 
Lancet, dopo l'affermazione che il metodo epidemiologico e' stato usato 
per quantificare le vittime di altre guerre, e accettato dalla 
comunita' internazionale come credibile.
Altra figura da pirla stellare, De Ce'.
Am.

Altra figura da pirla stellare,
...disse il pirla stellare mononeurone... :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 E questa e' una puttanata di tua fantasia.
No, e' scritto nell'articolo, pirla. E ora puoi andare, negazionista.
Am.

E ora puoi andare, negazionista.
...disse il bue all'asino... :)
-Stefano

 campionamento.
E tu naturalmente sapresti descrivere i metodi di campionamento per 
ottenere metodi statisticamente validi meglio di The Lancet, noto covo 
di comunisti?,
O vuoi fare i calcoli di scarto quadratico medio, media campionaria, 
varianza campionaria, e farci sapere i risultati in un prestigioso 
paper su una rivista scientifica di tua scelta?
Grazie, pirla, puoi andare...
Am.

O vuoi fare i calcoli
I calcoli sono gia' stati fatti e la forbice e' gia' stata indicata a
suo tempo, caro *FESSO MONONEURONE* :)
-Stefano

 suo tempo, caro *FESSO MONONEURONE* :)
Io conosco solo quella di the Lancet come forbice. Grazie per indicare 
l'altra, e su quale base e' stata calcolata:
http:..................................................................................................................
Oppure 
beccati l'epiteto di negazionista, che scherza con un sorrisetto da 
ebete segaiolo sul sangue di centinaia di migliaia di vittime.
Am.

centinaia di migliaia di vittime
Vittime .... di fantasia :)
-Stefano

 Qui si parla di *RICERCA STATISTICA.
Ah, e'questo il tuo problema da analfabeta presuntuoso?
Be' documentati: l'analisi epistemiologica e' un metodo di ricerca 
statistico,cosi' come l'analisi demografica.
'Sto pirla del vino analcolico...
Am.

Be' documentati: l'analisi epistemiologica
Prendi un vocabolario e guarda la differenza tra ***EPIDEMIOLOGICA*** e
***EPISTEMIOLOGICA*** caro *COGLIONE MONONEURONE* :)
-Stefano

 statistico,
CDO
-- 
lo Splenetico
"Non sto cercando, me ne frego di chi ha scritto
  le fregnacce che hai postato.
  Per curiosita', e' Scruton?"      Palmiro Pangloss

 -Stefano
Per una  volta mi hai preso in castagna: analisi epidemiologica.
Va' ora documentati sull'analisi epidemiologica  come ramo della statistica.
Non tardare, infante,  e' un problema epistemologico che faresti bene a 
chiarirti...
Am.

 CDO
 lo Splenetico si consola delle sue recenti tranvate con un po' di 
schadenfreude...
Am.

 CDO
Codesti splenetici si sono ridotti a raccattare gli errori di distrazione
(ovviamente, la parola "epistemiologica" deriva dall'interferenza fra il
termine "epistemologica" ed "epidemiologica")? Abbandonato dai preti, ti
aggrappi ai decesari?
Namib
--
"If I'm not back in five minutes, call the Pope"
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter

 
Quanta acredine verso questo Splenetico! Come mai, Namib?


 Quanta acredine verso questo Splenetico! Come mai, Namib?
Ma quale acredine? Ho solo rilevato la meschinità (oggettiva: Amalric e SDC
discutevano di "epidemiologia", ed era chiaro a tutti l'errore di
distrazione) del tuo comportamento. Oh, sia chiaro: in una discussione
accalorata, anche questo ci può stare; ma, così, a freddo, è molto
inelegante. Poi, ovviamente, fa' un po' come ti pare.
Namib

Non tardare, infante,


 schadenfreude...
Un'altra parola di cui palesemente ignori il significato.


 inelegante. 
Aprire a freddo uno sconclusionato thread intitolato "preti abbandonano 
splenetico" cos'e', o improvvisato arbiter elegantiarum?


 splenetico" cos'e', o improvvisato arbiter elegantiarum?
Caro Petronio de noantri,
lo "sconclusionato" thread era il *séguito* di una delle moooolte
discussioni che hai avuto sull'argomento. In questo ng ti caratterizzi
(insieme a Castagno) per la difesa della tesi dell'ID, e come tale vieni
chiamato in causa. Te ne vergogni?
Namib

 chiamato in causa. Te ne vergogni?
Vergogna? E perche', a tuo parere?


 Vergogna? E perche', a tuo parere?
Infatti, non ce ne sarebbe ragione. Era una domanda.
Namib

 Un'altra parola di cui palesemente ignori il significato.
scha·den·freu·de  (shädZn-froi.dM)
n.
 Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
[German : Schaden, damage (from Middle High German schade, from Old 
High German scado) + Freude, joy (from Middle High German vreude, from 
Old High German frewida, from fr7, happy).]
Altra occasione perduta, Splenetico. Non sei in palla...
Am.


Misfortune.
Ti hanno bruciato la casa? Hai perso il lavoro? sei stato condannato a
10 anni di carcere?
No, semplicemente hai assunto un tono professorale ("documentati") per
incorrere subito dopo in uno svarione; uno degli archetipi della
comicita', insomma. Ma non una "misfortune".
Schadenfreude era fuori luogo.


 Schadenfreude era fuori luogo.
Gia'. Dimenticavo che sei un pedante: capace di ridere degli errori 
altrui ma non dei propri.
Q.E.D.
Auguri,
Am.