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March 26, 2007
| UK Ministry Of Defence Concluded Lancet Methodology Was Sound | Iraq |
When a peer-reviewed study published last October in the Lancet concluded that the war had already killed 655,000 Iraqis, the number was dismissed out of hand by US and British authorities, who publicly bad-mouthed the study's methodology. Internal documents obtained by the BBC, however, show that UK's ministry of defence was advised that the study's methodology was sound. BBC:
The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet.
But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".
Another expert agreed the method was "tried and tested". [...]
The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October.
It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.
The researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people.
In nearly 92% of cases family members produced death certificates to support their answers. The survey estimated that 601,000 deaths were the result of violence, mostly gunfire.
Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate.
He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.
President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report."
But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."
One of the documents just released by the Foreign Office is an e-mail in which an official asks about the Lancet report: "Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies."
The reply from another official is: "We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate."
In the same e-mail the official later writes: "However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."
Asked how the government can accept the Lancet's methodology but reject its findings, the government has issued a written statement in which it said: "The methodology has been used in other conflict situations, notably the Democratic republic of Congo.
"However, the Lancet figures are much higher than statistics from other sources, which only goes to show how estimates can vary enormously according to the method of collection.
"There is considerable debate amongst the scientific community over the accuracy of the figures."
In fact some of the British government criticism of the Lancet report post-dated Sir Roy's comments.
Speaking six days after Sir Roy praised the study's methods, British foreign office minister Lord Triesman said: "The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern...." [...]
If the Lancet survey is right, then 2.5% of the Iraqi population - an average of more than 500 people a day - have been killed since the start of the war. [Emphasis added]
Most people don't understand statistical sampling, so they tend to form an opinion based on a sort of rough average of all the comments they happen to hear. If pretty much everybody who gets on tv says one kind of number, a study like the Lancet study can't make much of a dent in how people think. It seems like too much of an outlier. No matter that most of the numbers being thrown around have little scientific basis, certainly not the kind of scientific basis the Lancet number has: the Lancet number gets shouted down.
It may be that the Lancet figure is too high. But a rough head count of what statistically-illiterate pundits and spin doctors say is not the way to make that determination. Especially when they have already lied about everything else.
Posted by Jonathan at March 26, 2007 01:13 PM
