The New England Journal of Medicine has chosen to disgrace itself the very same week the Lancet has chosen to publish outrageous lies about Iraq:
The drugs most commonly used to soothe agitation and aggression in people with Alzheimer’s disease are no more effective than placebos for most patients, and put them at risk of serious side effects, including confusion, sleepiness and Parkinson’s disease-like symptoms, researchers are reporting today.
The report, based on a large government comparison of the drugs’ effectiveness, challenges current practice so sharply that it could quickly alter prescribing habits, some experts said. About 4.5 million Americans suffer from the progressive dementia of Alzheimer’s disease, and most patients with the advanced disease exhibit agitation or delusions at some point.
Lies. All of it. Now, mind you, I haven’t read the actual science, but the article says it right here:
In the study, researchers followed 421 Alzheimer’s patients with disabling agitation, delusions or hallucinations who were randomly assigned to receive either dummy pills or one of the three antipsychotic drugs. Doctors adjusted the doses as needed, tracked how long they stayed on the drugs, and noted their improvement, if any.
Only 421 people? How can they possibly know whether it works in every case from this? Why should we accept these facts? Of course they knew it wouldn’t work- they used ‘dummy pills’ because they wanted this experiment to fail. David Zincavage explains it all for us:
Figures lie and liars figure. And today’s sophisters, calculators, and economists habitually design the methodologies, choose the selection basis of the data, project the extrapolations, massage the numbers, and juggle the math.
I am pretty sure someone at the New England Journal of Medicine donated money to a Democrat- more proof, as if any was necessary. So, just like the Iraq study, just like Terri Schiavo, this is nothing but lies. Why? Because I said so, and I’ve got truthiness on my side. Maybe I can get a couple other websites to link to this post, and that will serve as reinforcement that I have THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED this nonsense.
I think part of the reason that Bush supporters think these studies are done to simply advance an agenda is that they know that is what this administration does when it comes to science- come to a predetermined conclusion, and then make the ‘science’ fit.
Zifnab
It’s not really true until you’ve posted it on Wikipedia.
John S.
That Zincavage – what a poet:
Sounds kind of like a Darrell rant – you know it’s all about the left, lefties, moonbats, etc.
But that first line is just murder to get through.
John Cole
I am still kinda pissed at my calculator- here I thought it was just there to balance my checkbook, and all this time it has been scheming against me.
Bastard.
tBone
Calculators have a well-known liberal bias. They hate America and everything it stands for.
jg
2006’s Blog of the Year. Just like Hollywood you’re putting out some of your best work late in the year so it’ll be remembered by the academy (otr whoever chooses BOTY).
Thomas
The important thing to remember when calling someone a liar is to provide no evidence. Otherwise, people might think you’re an idiot.
DaveC
Father in law has Alzheimers, Risperadol keeps him non-violent, calmer, and he used to get very angry and threaten people and hit himself. At this point, he has no idea what medications he is taking so how could it be a placebo effect?
That stuff is so damned expensive I sort of wish it didn’t work.
canuckistani
It would be funnier if it was less true.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Note the pride in the right’s ignorance of science.
sockpuppet in training
Thank God John Cole has such a good grasp on what “random” means in random sample. We would be lost without you, Mr. Cole.
Bombadil
You know, reading John Cole’s posts for the last couple weeks has been like listening to someone who kicked a two-pack-a-day habit expound on the evils of smoking. There’s nothing like the preaching of the truly converted!
John, you’re on a roll here — keep it up! I’m planning on nominating you for a Koufax award next year. “Best Conversion from the Dark Side”, perhaps.
Tsulagi
No, say it ain’t so. Jesus is weeping.
Zifnab
If they work, it’s probably best to leave this to your doctor – or at least another doctor with a second opinion – DaveC. But this sounds like the old Ritalin delemma. Are there kids who need Ritalin and for whom it works? Sure. Does Ritalin need to be proscribed to every (or even the majority of) kids who bounce around in class? Probably not.
Admittedly, I’m sure many will note the poor comparisson between a hyperactive 4-year-old and a dementia-ridden 94-year-old.
Doug
That’s pretty much how I did my high school chemistry labs. So I can’t be too hard on them. Hehe, I said “hard on them.” Probably I should make a Mark Foley joke now.
RSA
Why don’t academic positions have the same quality standards that right-wing-controlled political positions have?
Krista
Those bastards! They should be massaging German Chancellors instead like a true American would!
Punchy
Holy fuck, I never thought of this. I want Tim’s science mind to weigh in on this, too.
The placebo effect only works if the patient is truly cognizant of the meds they’re taking. They have to be fully arware they’re being dosed, and with how much, and how often. If these are truly the end-stage Alzhy’s patients, I’m quite sure they haven’t a clue what’s being given to them.
Can anyone else explain how the placebo effect could work if the patient is congnitively unable to process their dosing regimen and thus assign symptom relief thereof?
Paul L.
Confirming or Debunking the Lancet Study with One Simple Question
ThymeZone
People around, attending to or treating the patient might act differently based on their perception of the treatment.
Punchy
Paul, today you’re REALLY struggling. Uh…the war started in 2003. We didn’t “hand over” gov’t until 2004. I’m guessing the actual “Ministry of Health” wasn’t formed until after the “elections” in Jan. of 2005. So NO, that ministry would NOT have 600K death certs, considering they’ve only been an institution for ~18 months.
And do you REALLY think they find 50 dead, bullet-ridden bodies every day, THEN do expensive, time-consuming, and pointless DNA forenics to ID every body, JUST to issue a death cert.? No, they dont. So, I’m guessing the Ministry has but a tiny fraction of the total dead ID’d.
Nice try, though.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Where are most calculators made, anyway? Taiwan? Korea? Hong Kong? That’s 2007’s SOTU “Axis of Evil” for you, Mr. President!
I propose that we invade Taiwan. Better to fight science over there than fight it here, in our own universities and classrooms.
(If nothing else, we can form a Coalition of the Extremely Willing with China. If we have to invade South Korea, we already have tens of thousands of troops deployed strategically around the nation. We can also form a Coalition of the Eager with North Korea.)
Pb
No. I already explained this in a previous thread when Steve brought it up, so all the literate people here who were involved in that discussion should know why.
Pb
No. I already explained this in a previous thread when Steve brought it up, so all the literate people here who were involved in that discussion should know why.
Jimmmm
Trying to make the Pajamas Media crowd feel at home, Mr Cole?
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Some of those bodies might come from Detroit. Iraq is well-known as a dumping ground for the bodies of those murdered by organized crime. I think Jimmy Hoffa is buried in Najaf somewhere.
That habit would also explain why peaceful, law-abiding nations like Iraq get their reputations tarnished by America’s inner-city gangs.
tBone
Just checked two calculators I have lying around, and both were made in China.
I think we’ll have to invade the entire Far East, just to be sure. The threat of commie calculators is too great to ignore. We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushy square root key.
Pb
Heh, sorry about the double post, I don’t know how that happened.
Also, nice catch, John. And I think I know where some of that anti-intellectualism came from:
Rudi
This study is BS, rumor has it that the ChimpinChief is being treated for his dementia with the very same drugs. Why is it that all the Repug Presidents have dementia? I can hardly wait for W ads for Depends diapers….
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Invading China will be tough, but at least we can rely on the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan to join the Coalition of the Willing. (And don’t forget Poland!)
Didn’t Mohammed Atta use a calculator when he was in engineering school? Also, wasn’t Iraq trying to purchase aluminum tubes from China? Doesn’t China send a lot of foreign aid to Niger?
The strands of the web of international terrorism become gradually apparent, and they all lead back to the black widow spider that is the current Chinese government.
bud
What if we make it proportional, then? How about 18/40 X 600K= 270K death certificates? Anybody got an answer?
Actually, I think he’s saying no.
The Other Steve
The idea of random sample has apparently been lost on Paul L and the Confederate Wanker.
BTW, nobody has explained to me how it is the US State Dept run by Condoleeeeezzzzaaa Rice has a similar study up on their website claiming there was 200,000 or some such deaths in the Sudan based upon a similar methodology.
Are you claiming Condoleeeezzzzzaaaa Rice is a big fat liar?
Or is the study methodology only discredited when Johns Hopkins researchers do it?
The Other Steve
Isn’t making it proportional kind of the whole point behind a random sampling?
tBone
Take that Defeatocrat crap somewhere else, moonbat. The Chinese people will greet us as liberators, and shower us with sweets and flowers. Ground bloom flowers, in fact. Extremely large ones with deluxe steel casings. It’s going to be quite festive.
The Other Steve
I doubt Thomas understands the irony of his statement.
RSA
Not to mention their socially liberal policies. My calculator does integration, for example. Not to mention reciprocals and harmonic sums of imaginary numbers, which I think are suggestive of a secret homosexual agenda.
docg
This will be a wasted effort, but here goes anyway. You can’t just make up statistical methods for a social science study. There are accepted research methods and statistical applications that peer reviewers know and demand adherence to by researchers. I have had my research both accepted and rejected for publication. (Disclaimer: I am a recovering academic, no longer in the academy.) Poorly designed and/or executed studies will NOT typically be accepted for publication in major journals, regardless of the political appeal of their outcomes. Cheating researchers get found out and get fired. It is simply wishful thinking to attack social science research as biased and made up. Poor studies do slip through occasionally, and yes, researchers are human and have political agendas. But to think research is routinely politicized and preordained to specific outcomes shows a great lack of knowledge as to how science works. I cannot attack the figures of an engineering project, I don’t know them or how they work. Statistics also takes a lot of study and practice to understand. Stick with political beliefs, as that is what is being discussed here anyway.
Paul L.
Then I would guess the percentage with valid death certificates would be less.
Tsulagi
LOL I thought the same, but I was trying to be nice and let it pass.
SeesThroughIt
Cole, you magnificent bastard, you just solved my money woes! Here I thought I had more money than I actually do, and it’s because of my damn anti-American, terrorist-swaddling, commie-ass al-Qalculator! Now I can make up the difference between how much money I actually have and how much I thought I had by charging appearance fees to go on the Hannity/Limbaugh/SavageWeiner shows and cry about how I’ve been persecuted against by evil machiines!
Rusty Shackleford
Punchy,
I think the placebo is administered to blind the investigators conducting the study, as well as the test subjects. Studies with a drug as the test article are generally double-blind (both investigator and subject are unaware of who has been dosed and with what).
Right, Tim?
Perry Como
I bet the New England Journal of Medicine is just trying to sell a book.
Tim F.
Bud is right for a change. Today they found 110. 110 != 50. Good work, man.
SeesThroughIt
I’ve had enough of the right’s Johns Hopkins bashing. That institution was smart enough to admit my dad into its medical school back in the day, and it was further smart enough to NOT admit me as an undergrad.
Also, because it needs to be said in this thread:
“Let’s ask this scientician!”
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
That’s why we bring daisy cutters to these celebrations. Too many flowers to handle otherwise.
It’s not war, it’s freedom. We’re bringing the Fourth of July to the downtrodden peoples of the world, and everyone, be they enemy combatants, insurgents, mercenaries, or collateral damage, is invited to participate in lighting off fireworks.
If I were a liberal Democrat, though, I’d propose hearings on these “Texas Instruments”. Does Bush have a hidden connection with the Chinese evildoers?
Punchy
I’m guessing the whole Chinese stockpile of rockets is one big ruse. We go to invade, and instead of Silkworms and MissleThatWellFlyIntoPlaneGoBoom, they’ll be defending with bottle rockets and smoke bombs. And throwing stars.
After all, everything else they make is cheap, shitty, plastic, and misassembled. If they cant get my Nikes right, how the fuck are we supposed to believe they can make bullets and uniforms?
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Components of those calculators- wires, batteries, etc.- can also be used in the construction of IEDs and other terrorist implements.
Is there any doubt that calculators are the tools of our enemies, the dastardly Chinese?
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Their insurgency will be a joke. We can probably occupy the entire city of Shanghai with, say, one platoon or so.
Plus, we can crack down on video piracy while we’re over there, saving millions for hardworking American entrepreneurs. Tariffs will vanish, and the free market will blossom. Bringing freedom to Beijing will clearly pay for itself!
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Their insurgency will be a joke. We can probably occupy the entire city of Shanghai with, say, one platoon or so.
Plus, we can crack down on video piracy while we’re over there, saving millions for hardworking American entrepreneurs. Tariffs will vanish, and the free market will blossom. Bringing freedom to Beijing will clearly pay for itself!
Pb
At least you admit that you’re guessing. So I take it that you still haven’t researched this at all, or looked through the previous threads to see that it has already been covered?
Tim F.
In medical research double-blind methodology is absolutely mandatory. If either the patient or the treating physician knows the nature of the pill then the results are useless.
Punchy, your case seems like an example of why anecdotes make for bad policy. When you deal with very large numbers of people taking a drug, some number will inevitably get better for reasons that might or might not have anything to do with the drug. Further, your kind of treatment is the opposite of double-blind. The patient might not know much about the drug, but the people administering it (yourself? family?) certainly do.
People are some of the most social animals around. If you administer the drug then you might grow a ilttle more relaxed and a bit less edgy in the expectation that the drug will work, and expectations often have a way of fulfilling themselves. There is really no way to know for sure without removing yourself from the trial, which I wouldn’t ask anybody to do. I say that if it works then go with it and don’t worry too much about the details. You might get edgy again (assuming that you were in the first place, which may or may not be true) and counteract the drug even if it actually does work.
Tim F.
And to add, don’t think about a pink elephant.
Pb
I believe they’re made in Taiwan, specifically.
Punchy
Oh, hell yeah. I worked in clincal research for 2 years, and all our studies were double-blinds. The only ones nowadays that arent are ones where the patient is so very very ill, that the doc is able to recognize a beneficial effect of meds immediately and then dose everyone (i.e., where continued dosing of the sick with placebos becomes ethically disasterous).
However, a placebo is a research staple, but the “placebo effect” is quite diff. It’s the proclivity of the study volunteers to proclaim drug efficacy (improved symptoms, etc.) even though they’re not gettin the med, but they think they are.
If a patient is unable to “know” what’s going on, as many end-stage Alzhys are, they’re also unable to describe this improvement in health. I’m guessing the study assumes the patients understand whats going on, and this health improvement is being recorded by onlookers, and not the patients themselves.
The Other Steve
Too bad your father didn’t go to Yale. You could have called yourself a Yale undergrad then.
RSA
You didn’t miss much, SeesThroughIt, unless you’re a fan of frequent phone calls from the alumni association asking for money.
The University of Maryland was smart enough not to admit me as a grad student, which I still irrationally hold against them.
Steve
Actually, I’m not sure I understood the explanation.
I think it’s a legitimate question to ask, if 90% of people with a dead relative have a death certificate, why we can’t just adopt some methodology of counting death certificates.
What I thought you said is that death certificates are primarily issued by local hospitals, and the central Health Ministry only collects numbers from those hospitals, not the death certificates themselves. Still, that leaves me wondering why the Health Ministry’s consolidated numbers – which they obtain by polling all the hospitals around the country – aren’t accurate, at least with regard to deaths reported to hospitals.
I also wonder why someone can’t simply go to the hospitals in some of the major cities and actually count their death certificates. Yeah, this wouldn’t give you an accurate total, but it would give you an absolute minimum to go by. And if the official Bush-approved number is something like 30,000, and you can say “wait, we have way more than that just by tallying death certificates in the Baghdad hospitals alone,” then at least you know the real number is on a higher order of magnitude.
I mean, these are real questions. Maybe the hospitals in Iraq don’t actually keep copies of the death certificates, they issue, for some reason. Maybe there’s something else about the system I don’t understand. But I’m still scratching my head a little bit.
LLeo
I wonder if there is a more profound problem here. Even what I would consider a good science education would not prepare well educated people to consider the validity of a scientific or statistical study.
Modern science operates at a level far beyond even an undergraduate bachelor of science degree. As a physics major in college I took 4-5 senior level mathematics classes. I consider myself on the high end of non-scientists for understanding of science. My second degree was in philosophy which focused on the Philosophy of Science (you know stuff like “what consitutes science” and “what are the limits of western empiricism for discovering Truth”). My philosophy department had classes where the poor regular philosophy majors were trying to understand Hilbert Spaces, Dirac Notation, and the Cardinality of Infinite Numbers. Even what I learn as a Physics major is kid stuff nearly a hundred years old physics, like Special Relativity (1905) and Quantum Mechanics (1929). Thermodynamics is even older.
If you accept my proposition that modern science operates beyond even a good undergraduate education, then the question is “how can we non-specialists evaluation the merits of these studies?”
One idea is to create a culture of respect and passive acceptence of what the Scientific Intelligencia tells us. We can still understand that the reporters in the regular media are the stupid kids from the “other side” of campus (you know english lit and journalism majors). That understanding of the non-specialized media allows us to take they’re characterizations of scientific studies with a grain of salt. However, that understanding of the media doesn’t give us the tools to read the studies ourselves or see thru the bizzare misuse of scientific language that the ignorant regular media uses.
The other tactit, the one taken by the current administration and the political party it represents, is to just ignore any inconvenient studies, facts, and conclusions of the real scientists that are sober and sincere. I’d like to say that social science studies are all sober and sincere, but there are clear counter examples of “scientific studies” that have been manipulated to political ends. My favorite examples are the studies on second hand smoking and the relationship between power lines and cancer. In the studies of the incidence of lung cancer for people exposed 8 hours a day to second hand smoking have all been within one sigma (66% confidence interval) of the incident of lung cancer in non-smokers. However the reports always claim meaningless numbers like 25% increase in risk (8 in 100,000 vs. 10 in 100,000).
So what do we do? Accept scientific studies that are fed to us or question all of them? What is the right way to stay skeptical but informed?
tBone
.
And let’s not forget that calculators are insidiously designed to secretly embed filthy words in certain number sequences. Even worse, these gay Communist Al-Queda-affiliated devil-machines have infiltrated our homes and offices – even, God help us, our schools. I shudder to think what could become of an innocent 5th grader who stumbles across one of these infernal devices.
8008135!
SeesThroughIt
Meh, I didn’t really want to go, anyway. And I knew I didn’t have much of a chance of getting accepted (high SATs plus mediocre GPA…not a good look when it comes to college admissions). I just thought it was funny that post-SATs, JH sent me an application with a letter expressing its very keen interest on having me attend the school. “You won’t be so interested once you actually see my application!” I thought as I applied. I was right.
Punchy
Maybe it’s too damn dangerous for a bunch of Coke-bottle bespectacled nerds from Johnny H to be riding thru sand storms to all the hospitals far outside the Green Zone, interviewing doctors/insurgents, nurses/insurgents, and hospital associates/devils in their Crocs and “MIT RULES” t-shirts….
Pb
Steve,
I think the key bit was at the end of what I quoted:
That alone sets a lower bound that’s higher than many we’ve seen thus far.
I don’t know that there’s anything stopping them from doing just that–in fact, it sounds like the LA Times checked it out and found out that you could, and that if you did, then it would bring “the total well beyond 50,000”.
Or the morgues as well. But if that is the case, they could try to cross-check the families surveyed with death certificates to see how frequently such records are not kept, or lost, or destroyed, etc.
Mac Buckets
Right. Take a look at some video of the moon-brit who runs the Lancet , sharing a stage at an anti-war rally with George Galloway. Then tell me again that he wouldn’t publish total crap written by anti-war Democrats if it fit his anti-Bush, anti-Blair agenda.
Ryan S.
Paul L. If you had actually read the report you would see how silly that argument is. Emphasis added.
and further on, near the end.
Lancet pdf
Faux News
MacBuckets, perhaps we can have some REAL science here on BJ. Get one of your right wing moonbat, home schooled friends to post his/her dissertation on “the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin”.
Better yet just give us the results. n = ?
Pb
The problem I see the most is just basic ignorance of or outright disbelief in the fundamentals of statistics, the very idea that you can survey a thousand people and project from that how a million people might answer a question with any degree of accuracy.
Let’s take as an example, an election. Let’s say that in fact, a million people in a given state are exactly split over who they want to elect, the Democrat or the Republican. And let’s say that you randomly survey a thousand people in that state. Given these facts–that there are 500,000 people who plan to vote for the Democrat, and 500,000 people who plan to vote for the Republican, and you survey 1,000 of them, at random, what are the odds that you’ll get it wrong?
In the extreme case, say you randomly pick 1,000 people who plan to vote for the Democrat. What are the odds of that? Why, it’s one in 2^1000. That’s on the order of 10^-300 % — 300 zeroes after the decimal place. If I said the odds of that were 0, I wouldn’t be far off. And that is the fundamentals behind the basic fact that the statistics deniers out there fail to grasp. This is the binomial distribution at work, which in fact approaches a bell-shaped curve rather quickly.
The odds of being wrong past a certain point is called the margin of error. In this example, there’s a 3.1% margin of error (with a 95% confidence interval), which means that, statistically speaking, 95% of the time you will not be off by more than 3.1%. If you had instead surveyed 100 people, the margin of error would increase to 9.8%. If you had instead surveyed 10,000 people, it would decrease to 0.98%. The math might look a little tricky, but it’s not rocket science, and the fundamentals are sound.
Steve
More serious, substantive rebuttals from the “THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED!” crowd, I see.
Yesterday, Mac took the position that these little anecdotes simply provide a little flavor on top of the vast souffle of serious, scientific rebuttals to the Lancet study. Yet the souffle, it seems, is eternally baking and cannot be subjected to public view. But rest assured, there are many, many sound scientific reasons why the study is complete hooey, we’re just too busy crying “moonbat!” to actually tell you what any of them are.
ThymeZone
The reason the story has legs is that the US Government has no figures of its own that are any good for anything.
We haven’t tracked Iraqi casualties or acted as if the these numbers are important, which is the real scandal.
That’s why the MacFukkits and Barrell Darrell types will hang around here now throwing rocks. They don’t want you to notice that your country is waging a war, and destabilizing a country, and plunging it into violent chaos, and doesn’t know the details. Probably because they don’t want you to know the details.
As long as the govt idiots and the blog trolls can keep you talking about the politics of this report, they can keep you from talking about the giant fuckup and pile of dead bodies outside the tent.
Krista
It’s a peer-reviewed medical journal. Do you honestly think that he wouldn’t be called on it if he did publish false information? Or is every world scientist also anti-Bush, anti-Blair?
Punchy
I just informed that the reddish of all companies, Wal-Mart, that they were selling Al-Qualculators. They promised me they would now sell only slide-rules and multiplication tables made in Morristown.
They agreed that too many shampoo bombs and RightGuard explosives could be produced if people knew how to add “40 oz” and “12 mLs” together.
I feel safer already.
John Cole
You are right. He does seem angry- prolly about something big- like maybe a half million dead.
Remember- I supported this war, and if there was any chance we could do anything successful, I would not give up. I understand collateral damage- I understand that innocents would die regardless how careful we were. But this has been a colossal fuckup.
And none of my personal opinions are relevant when analyzing this study. Show how it is methodologically flawed, show how the data is wrong. Try to replicate it. Come up with your own procedures for this type of sampling, since the widely accepted cluster sampling is not acceptable. Then get back to me with your results, because right now, calling someone a “moon-brit” does nothing to invalidate what others piublished in Lancet.
BTW- special props for the ingenious use of logical fallicies. You used an ad hominem attack against the editor of a magazine to invalidate the work of someone completely different. That is pretty special.
Pb
I hope they don’t sell any cleaning products… And heaven help us if MacGyver converts…
Tsulagi
Lighten up on the statistics. People are dying as fast as they can over there. It’s a process. Takes time.
Also, they’re running as fast as they can. The Iraq immigration minister estimated 890,000 Iraqis have fled the country in the past three years for safer havens in Jordan, Iran, and Syria.
No doubt his numbers are a little off too. The big-picture point is the plan is working. Stay the course.
Walker
You don’t have to do too much to bring people up to speed on the nature of science. Even bringing up to the level that they were in the freakin’ Enlightenment would be enough.
The problem is that this is partially a problem of the academic left. In the appendix to Fashionable Nonsense, Sokal predicted the political right would use the anti-Enlightenment scholasticism of the academic left to put us in this position. History has shown him to be 100% correct. The problem is that this type of thinking is systemic in the US educational system and is becoming very difficult to overcome.
To understand what I mean, I teach basic mathematical proof, reasoning, and argument to undergrads. You would be horrified to know the number of students I get that believe that (1) everything is a matter of opinion and (2) all opinions are no better than any other. Of course, we get some of that on blogs like this, so maybe you aren’t surprised.
jg
You’re not giving up. Don’t use their language. Adjusting strategy based on the facts isn’t giving up.
John D.
Jesus, Mac.
I told you yesterday, science *does not care* who does the research.
If the study is flawed, it will be apparent in the data. So, point out where the data or the methodology is flawed, please.
Walker
All science is a vast left-wing conspiracy, don’t you know? They control the journals, so they control the message. That’s why all the science-policy think tank commentators from Heritage have humantities degrees — they were shut out by the great conspiracy.
At least that’s what the message the followers of Cliff Kincaid have been spreading for years now.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Then we’ll have to invade Taiwan, to restore the honor of Texas.
Didn’t Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah shop in Walmart one time? And isn’t Walmart opening retail stores in China?
Now it’s all coming together, you see.
You’re right to blame America’s mathematical ignorance on the left’s moral turpitude. America’s left, in alliance with China, has conspired to swarm our schools and offices with calculators. Taiwan has besmirched the reputation of Texas with calculators capitalizing on its namesake. Korea, in addition to cloning people, is located in close proximity to China and Taiwan, and may well be researching the production of its own calculators.
The stakes are too high for us to become complacent, or for us to allow the objectively pro-Hu Jintao Defeatocrats to let our enemies undermine our math scores any further.
Remember the lessons of 8008135.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Even if it’s the terrorists.
That’s the problem, moonbat.
Mac Buckets
You should know better than that, John. I’m Mac Buckets, not Ppg. It’s not ad hominem — it goes directly to the motivation to publish this study, which was the other poster’s point. Geez, I even block-quoted it for you. You’re not even trying.
So we can make up any number we want? OK, I choose 40K. The ‘bats can choose 1.6 billion. Gosh, I thought you were a Guardian Of The Purity and Nonpartisanship Of Science. But two Democrat activists (including one 2006 candidate!) publish two consecutive October Surprises in a moonbat journal declaring that eleventy jillion Iraqis have died, and you suck it up like a Hoover Deluxe.
See, the beauty of the October Surprise timing is that, as in 2004, the debunks don’t get disseminiated by the Big Media at all, and by the time the blogs get penetration, it’s after the election. Or do you believe the timing is just a twice-occurred coincidence?
There’s so much to choose from in terms of debunking, besides the small-sample extrapolation and survey method. First, are you aware that the “researchers” used a mortality figure for pre-war Iraq that is 1/3 lower than the US mortality rate for 2002? Of course, artificially deflating the prewar death rates increases “excess deaths.”
So what they’re saying was it was 1/3 safer and healthier to live in Iraq with a decayed infrastructure, bad water and sanitation, rampant hunger, killer sanctions, 6,000 kids dying per month, and a murderous totalitarian regime than it was to live in Witchita Falls, TX.
Do you believe that’s the case, or do you think they’re playing with the numbers? Who would be so gullible as to use such a figure? What could their motivation possibly be?
Walker
I swear this post looks like satire, but I cannot tell.
I will say that the official sanctioning of calculators on the AP Calculus was one of the worst commerical scams I have ever seen. But that has nothing to do with my previous post.
Walker
Well, sitting here reading the article, I see that they used well-accepted methodology to come up with this figure. They didn’t make it up.
So what is your reason for doubting it? Is there some axiom that says that authoricratic regimes must have equal or higher mortality rates to democratic ones. What is that axiom based on?
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Satire is for leftists, Walker.
Exactly. And that’s how the Chinese got their claws into us. Now that it’s coming out that Mohammed Atta and Osama Bin Laden used their technology to plot the 9/11 attacks, I think we need to take military action against them. We know Taiwan will cheer us on, if not openly help us; and I’m guessing Vietnam, India, Japan, and Russia have some scores they’d like to settle, too. But if necessary, America will go it alone. We’ve never shied away from doing what was right in the past just because it was difficult; I see no reason to start.
Remember the lessons of 8008135, and do what has to be done, America.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Death squads.
John D.
The figure they used from 2002 was, amazingly enough, cribbed DIRECTLY FROM THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK.
And whether you choose to believe it or not, the mortality rate in LOTS of countries is far less than the USA. (2004 World Factbook ranks the USA at 108th, with 8.34 deaths/1000 people.) We’ve been between 8 and 8.5 for a long time — we have a lot of old people. They die with astonishing regularity.
Please stop with the argument from incredulity. It’s beneath you, Mac. I know you have a brain. Use it.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
I bet they didn’t get killed by Saddam, though. Or Hillary Clinton.
Well, most of them, anyway.
tBone
Look, it’s hard enough being a dead-ender. Do you really have to further inconvenience Mac with facts? Especially facts from a notorious moonbat journal like the CIA World Factbook?
Pb
Is The CIA in on it too?
Actually, according to them, it’s *still* 1/3 lower!
Tsulagi
Let’s see, someone hears this…
And he responds with…
Is Mac Buckets related to Thomas?
Then in pure rational, scientific reasoning this follows…
Let’s see, The CIA World Factbook 2002 lists the Iraq death rate at 6.02/1,000 and the USA death rate at 8.7. ????? Okay, who the fuck in the CIA was killing all the babies in Witchita Falls?!
Sherard
Jesus Christ, John, you have really gone over the edge. Was there even a POINT being made in that incoherent rambling nonsense ? Get a grip.
tBone
Someone ought to do a mortality study in Arkansas pre- and post-Clinton. The results would be astonishing. Train murders alone had to account for a significant spike in the death rate during the Clinton years.
ThymeZone
What’s the official US occupation-approved number, Mac?
Why can’t you find it?
Tim F.
Jesus wept.
Tim F.
Whether or not the ad hominem was appropriate in this case (circumstantial evidence can act to support an argument that already has significant factual basis) it boggles the mind to simply deny that it is what it is.
Perry Como
And this is a tragedy. I think we need to ask Nancy Pelosi when she knew about this. If she has nothing to hide, she’ll have no problem testifying under oath.
ThymeZone
Jesus wept.
My gift to you all for today.
ThymeZone
.
Right on. I die every time I see one of Mac’s posts.
Perry Como
ThymeZone Says:
Moonbat. That’s the pre-9/11 Jesus. The post-9/11 Jesus kicks ass and takes names.
John S.
Mac is right! I mean calling someone a moon-brit who cavorts with George Galloway goes right to the heart of refuting this study! It’s not an ad hominem at all:
Oh, nevermind. I guess Mac brought his “F” game today.
John Cole
An argument ad hominem (aka and ad hominem attack) is a logical fallacy and is defined by Wikipedia (and we will just assume the Marxists Bush Haters at Wikipedia are being honest with us) as such:
To give you an example from a real conversation, say you disagree with the new Lancet study and want to debunk it. The following is an argument ad hominem:
Even if you are responding to someone else, that is still an argument ad hominem. Period. Even if you think it provides ‘motivation’ to publish something, it is still a logical fallacy. It will remain a logical fallacy tomorrow. Barring a GOP takeover of Communication Studies and Rhetoric departments worldwide, it will remain an argument ad hominem for the forseeable future.
And because there is so much confusion on this topic, let me state that an argument ad hominem IS NOT the same as an insult, as an ad hominem is a form of fallacious argument. An insult is just that- a barb, an attack, an assault, an offront.
For example, the following is an insult:
“Anyone who uses argument ad hominems about the editor of the Lancet and thinks that by doing so he/she is “debunking” the Lancet study is a total jackass.”
Steve
The other problem with Mac’s latest argument is that it’s difficult to argue that the study’s methodology resulted in massive UNDERcounting of the pre-war deaths as well as massive OVERcounting of the post-war deaths, since the same methodology was used in both cases.
In fact, one of the corroborating factors in the study is that the pre-war death rate calculated through this method pretty well matches up with the pre-war death rate as calculated by other sources. If it was such a wacky method, you’d expect their pre-war numbers to be way out of the ballpark too, but they’re not.
jg
Hitchens wept.
Face
I’m pretty sure those clowns over at the CIA are a bunch of liberal, America-hating, Jane Hartman-photo ejaculating traitors.
They couldn’t compute a mortality rate if they found 8 dead people in a crowd of 92 alive ones….
ThymeZone
ppG wept.
Detlef
Just a “short” comment. :)
Body Count in Baghdad Nearly Triples
(WaPo September 8, 2006)
(Emphasis and insertions mine. Likewise re-arranged paragraphs of the original article.)
That´s just Bagdad alone. Does anyone think that they´re planning for 250 corpses a day in Bagdad alone just for fun?
Notice that the morgue “chiefly handles unidentified gunshot victims”. Add deaths in hospitals, add deaths in the rest of the country and the daily death rate in Iraq becomes frightfully high. And we´re not even talking about patients who die simply because of lack of medical supplies (or lack of electricity).
Does anyone think that several hundred thousand people (which is a very high percentage of the overall population) fled the country just for fun? I´ve read about numbers like 700,000-800,000 refugees out of a population of 25-27 million.
So the ordinary Iraqi family might get a death certificate at the local morgue or hospital. Does anyone think that sending a copy of these local death certificates to the Health ministry in Bagdad is one of the highest priorities of the Iraqi government right now?
Right now, the Iraqi government is probably spending more money on their bodyguards than on a federal statistics office. :)
BARRASSO
So the Lancet is a left wing rag because some people working there are democrats, that pretty much makes all scientific journals invalid. Or is all science published in October invalid, the rest is okay.
Perry Como
My guess is Joe Wilson and his Mrs. Joe Wilson “edited” the CIA “Factbook.” Did Nancy Pelosi know about this?
tBone
That’s the real question. Time to get her under oath. Or strapped to a
waterboarding apparatustruthiness detector.ThymeZone
I demand to know why our Republican government does not have a plan to counter these damnable “statistics” with their own exhaustive and accurate Iraq casualty figures?
What did the administration know, and when did they know it?
Why doesn’t the president have any clue whatsoever what the correct casualty figures are?
Why is Mac Fuckkits covering up this scandal?
Punchy
More like the CIA Facebook. They took the statistics from an entry by some sophomore math major at Colgate whose main interests are waterskiing and X-box and who has a friend named Earl…
Perry Como
Listen up moonbat. There’s an election in a month and the President needs to focus on keeping Republican congressmen safe. No Congressional Republican Left Behind.
Punchy
HEY MR. JOHN COLE–
CINDY SHEEHAN A FINALIST FOR THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. Gets awarded tomorrow.
Sleep well tonite.
The Other Steve
I’m trying to understand Mac Buckets argument.
Ok, as John Cole pointed, this is the editor of the journal and not the people who performed the study.
So what does it have to do with the price of cheese? To which Mac responded…
So Mac basically admits that his argument has no support for a claim that the study is flawed. He is rather arguing about why it was published.
Do all Republicans argue like this Mac guy? If so, that would pretty much explain why they are so pathetic at governing. When you are so ashamed of your own ideas that you are not even willing to support them in argument, that shows a profound weakness.
LLeo
That’s just MEAN.
I am ofcourse laughing my ass off.
Steve
I found some reasonable answers to the death certificate questions here.
ThymeZone
Mac doesn’t actually argue, that would require taking and defending a position.
He just moons us out of the car window.
Bruce Moomaw
John, I really don’t know why you’re wasting either your time or your rhetoric on that halfwit Zincavage. I’ve mentioned previously that, in the same comment where he made the Wormtongue remark, he solemnly announced that the REAL blame for the Korean mess fell upon the heads of Truman and LBJ (and presumably Ike and Nixon) for not immediately going for “total victory” in both wars, presumably by getting into near-certain nuclear exchanges with Russia and China respectively.
That being said — and I never thought I would utter these words — you’re being unfair to Mac Buckets. His negative ad hominem remark was just a direct response to the POSITIVE ad hominem remark made by DOCG (10/12, 1:13 PM): “Poorly designed and/or executed studies will NOT typically be accepted for publication in major journals, regardless of the political appeal of their outcomes.” That is, DOCG said that the study is likely true not because he has concluded that the methodology is correct, but just because the Lancet is a “major journal” and therefore unlikely to accept a quack paper for publication. Mac simply said there was evidence — given the political background of the Lancet’s editor — that it was an atypical publication that WAS capable of publishing a quack paper.
So can we all get back to discussing the actual methodology of the damn paper, for Chrissake?
The Ghost of Santa Claus
I know for a fact that Westchester County has had a huge spike in Billaries since January 2001. (That’s our special name for them here in Hell. We get so many down here, they had to have their own category- not unlike Kennedations or Cuomocides.)
Yes, that’s right, you fuckers- I’m in Hell, and Marilyn Monroe is giving me a lap dance. Later on, I’m going ou drinking with Audrey Hepburn, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Ovid, and some guy I just met who was a hoplite in the Theban Army named Aristeides. We’re gonna get trashed, then have an orgy or something.
The Easter Bunny can have my wife, I was only in that marriage for the respectability and the cookies anyway. Ho ho ho, bitches!
Zifnab
Basically, if the reporter for a newspaper or the editor or the paper’s owner or anyone along the primary or secondary strings of management have any affiliations with the Democratic party then a story printed in said newspaper did not happen or has been wildly misrepresented.
It’s a well known fact that donating money, time, or goodwill towards any organization with a D in front means that you have sold your soul to Satan (see: Hillary) and will move heaven and earth to sell the left-wing agenda to all within listening distance.
Free your mind. Vote Republican.
John Cole
Bruce- I like Mac, and, in the larger sense, I don;t think I was being unfair. I understand what he was doing, but regardless, even if he believesthere is evidence they might publish a quack paper, that still does nothing to address the methodology of the paper. I do see your point, though, in that he was not advancing that argument, but rebutting someone else. In that sense, I was unfair.
My apologies Mac.
Bruce Moomaw
Regarding Confederate Yankee’s argument that, if 92% of the deaths discovered by the Lancet study had valid death certificates, the Iraqi Ministry of Health ought to be able to produce 561,000 death certificates for violent deaths, he’s making one tiny and very dangerous assumption: that the Iraqi Ministry of Health isn’t willing to lie through its teeth about its own records of the death certificates issued by it, to greatly understate the total number of violent deaths. Which it is.
They have already been caught lying through their teeth (along with the CPA) about the supposed recent “dramatic drop” in violent deaths in Baghdad after the Bush Administration launched its latest drive to pacify that city — to be precise, they had to confess a few days later that they had understated the violent death rate during that period by a factor of three — and the Health Minister is a close ally of al-Sadr and (acording to CBS News), routinely lets Iraq’s hospitals be used as operations centers, execution facilities and torture facilities by the Shiite militia (who are now pretty solidly under al-Sadr’s control). So the fact that the Ministryn of Health’s (public) estimate of violent deaths in Iraq is far smaller than the conclusions of the Lancet study is precisely worthless as evidence.
David Zincavage
If that study published in the Lancet constituted a philosophical argument based upon reason, Mr. Cole would be correct in rejecting the impeachment of its editor’s bona fides as an irrelevant ad hominem argument.
But when we the public are presented with an essentially opaque claim (As I’ve observed elsewhere, 99.9999% of persons reading the headline lack time, inclination, or means to investigate the data, methodology, and calculations) allegedly empirically demonstrated, it makes very good sense to note the presence of strong biases on the part of the vendors of that purportedly empirical information.
In other words, if the Lancet presents me with an
A = B
B = C
therefore A = C
argument, and the propositions are not disputable, you’re right: argle-bargling about the politics, history, public behavior, and so on of that publication’s editor (or the study’s authors)is pointless and intellectually dishonest.
But if a fellow comes along, and says: I’ve been working in my laboratory and found the philosopher’s stone, and you know that the guy is whackjob, a liar, and has a bee in his bonnet about alchemy, you’d be well-advised to reject his claim without further ado, precisely upon ad hominem grounds.
If you have a grocer, who has previously been caught selling clay coffee beans (and this same Lancet editor was very embarassingly caught publishing junk science previously), it is rational to reject his goods, particularly when he is obviously trying in an unconventional manner to make the sale.
Cheers,
David
Bob In Pacifica
Science News has an interesting and positive article about uses for psilocybin (which don’t involve listening to “Ina Gadda Da Vida” through your headphones). “Mystical experiences triggered by the drug psilocybin yield lasting, positive changes in people’s lives, a study shows.”
Myself, I’ll be watching football this weekend.
Bruce Moomaw
“If a fellow comes along, and says: I’ve been working in my laboratory and found the philosopher’s stone, and you know that the guy is whackjob, a liar, and has a bee in his bonnet about alchemy, you’d be well-advised to reject his claim without further ado, precisely upon ad hominem grounds.”
Unless, of course, the people on the other side have just as much motivation to lie — which, in this case, they do. (See my previous statement.)
Bruce Moomaw
“But when we the public are presented with an essentially opaque claim (As I’ve observed elsewhere, 99.9999% of persons reading the headline lack time, inclination, or means to investigate the data, methodology, and calculations) allegedly empirically demonstrated, it makes very good sense to note the presence of strong biases on the part of the vendors of that purportedly empirical information.”
Yep — unless, as I said, it makes equally good sense to note strong biases on the part of the people who denounce that purportedly empirical information. So — as I also said before — can we actually get back to debating the methodology of the fucking report?
The Easter Bunny
Jesus H Christ on a Segway. You’re even dumber dead than you were when you were alive, you fat tub of guts.
Here’s a newsflash for you, Tons-o-fun: YOU’RE IN HELL. Sure, you get a lapdance from Marilyn and then have an orgy with a bunch of other cool cats while a hot chick in the corner films the whole thing.
Then the hot chick – wait a minute, she’s really not that hot at all; what the hell? – plays back the footage for you. “Marilyn” doesn’t look so good now; in fact she looks a lot like . . . oh my God, is that J. Edgar Hoover in a red dress? And why does Ovid suddenly have that stupid little square mustache? What’s going on here?? Who filmed this? What’s your name? Leni? What the hell kind of name is that? Give me that damn camera, you skag –
And then you wake up with a red-hot poker shoved up your fat ass and realize that you’re going to forget all about this later today when Marilyn shows up at the bar and offers you a free lapdance . . . day after day after day after day.
Really, I’m surprised ‘ol Beelezebub devised such an elaborate setup for you. He could have simply put a Twinkie on a string and dangled it just out of your reach for all eternity.
Pb
Or you could bring him a chunk of lead and ask him to turn it into gold, i.e., try to test it.
Cite? Also, what’s so unconventional here?
Steve
It’s not an opaque claim. It’s a peer-reviewed scientific study that fully discloses its methodology. Make a substantive critique if you like, but don’t expect anyone to be impressed when you say “I don’t have the time to investigate the study, so I’m just going to cry MOONBAT!”
Even if you use lots of big words.
demimondian
But, Steve, Zincavage’s has already THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED the report. If you do stupid things like you know, actually trying to rebut the paper (like Mac has, twice), then…hey, you might be *demonstrably wrong*. So, really, since he can’t possibly be wrong, it’s enough that he’s THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED the paper. Particularly since he’s used big words.
Never mind that several of us here have already read the paper, and know enough of statistical techniques to criticize it. Hell, Mac pointed out that the Iraqi pre-war death rate looked suspicious, which was a great point — so I went and looked at the CIA fact book, and discovered that was where the authors drew the value. But, gosh, having the courage to actually risk being wrong…nah, it’s much better to THOROUGHLY DEBUNK the paper.
Particularly if you’re an ankle-biting, ad-hominem-wielding, coward.
Bruce Moomaw
Daniel Davies has a lengthy defense of the same groups’ repvious study in a Nov. 1, 2004 post at “Crooked Timber”, and makes two important points:
(1) “Since the study compares own-averages of the clusters before and after the invasion, anyone wanting to make this critique [that its estimate of the prewar death rate is too low] needs to come up with a convincing explanation of why it is that the study showed a lower death-rate than the national average before the invasion and not after the invasion.” (This is the same point Steve made in his 3:57 PM posting.)
(2) “[Regarding the argument that]it gives a different number from Iraq Body Count. so it must be wrong: This critique is also fairly stupid. The IBC numbers are compiled from well-sourced English language press reports. They therefore represent a lower bound on any credible estimate of casualties, not a definitive number. Thousands of people die in the UK every day; how many of them make it into the papers? How may into the Arabic language press?”
Bruce Moomaw
Crooked Timber (specifically, Davies and Kieran Healey) also have two important points today about the latest study:
(1) “…t[T]here is no inconsistency between the fact that 92% of people with a dead relative could produce the certificate when asked, and the fact that Iraq has no remotely reliable mortality statistics and quite likely undercounts the rate of violent death by a factor of ten.”
(2) “The present estimate is for a large country of 26 million people over three and a half years. Sadly, this means it’s quite achievable. As Juan Cole points out, you just have to believe that four our five people a day are being shot or otherwise killed in each of Iraq’s major towns outside of Baghdad.”
One thing for sure: if this study is debunked, it won’t be by President Bush. His comment on the study at yesterday’s press conference (which seems likely to live in infamy) was — so help me God — “I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.” Reassuring, isn’t it?
ThymeZone
I don’t know about you, but it feels good every six months or so to go in for a a THOROUGH DEBUNKING.
I especially like the bidet, and the avocado scalp massage.
David Zincavage
For PB:
http://briandeer.com/mmr-lancet.htm
Original link here:
http://neveryetmelted.com/?p=1707
For demimondian:
Actually, I think the real cowards are the toadies who hang out in big time bloggers’ comment sections, dishing out noisy abuse to anybody daring to take exception to the local party line, and who are typically the meekest little lambs in the real world, where bad manners and a big mouth can sometimes carry a penalty.
DZ
ThymeZone
No sale, pal. My bad manners and big mouth have gotten me where I am today in real life: Rich, chased after by beautiful women, and the one every guy in the neighborhood comes to for advice on their cars, their lawns, their love lives, their portfolios, and their cholesterol.
demimondian
DZ, “bad manners and a big mouth can carry a penalty”.
I’ve been THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED by a
right-wing virginankle-biting, ad-hominem wielding jerk! My life is complete.Pb
Oh, *that* link. Never mind.
Pb
Not to mention a booming mail-order seed business!
cd6
You had me at “meekest”
I’m conviced all other speak in folly and you are the one true word. I shall follow you anywhere, brave and noble blogger of neveryetmelted. Teach me!
ThymeZone
{ add to cart }
My best line ever.
harrison
From all the “ad hominem” comments, it’s good to know that the Left is no longer going to dismiss science papers solely because they are funded by someone they don’t approve of. Especially in the environmental field.
The U.N. did a study of this kind back when Lancet was claiming 100,000 war-related dead. They used the same methods, and interviewed a lot more Iraqi households than the Lancet study. Their number came out as 24,000 war-related dead. So who’s right?
Remember, scientific comments only.
ThymeZone
The White House, of course. They don’t have a damned clue what the real number is, and don’t care. The last thing they want is having people counting bodies when they are trying to sell a load of horseshit called Freedom on the March.
Imagine this, if you will. Iraq is “central” to the “war on terror” which is a “clash of civilizations.”
Our very civilization is at stake. America hangs in the balance, freedom and democracy teeter on the brink … and we are almost four years into a war with no end in sight, and a military and a government that have no clue whatever how many people are being killed and wounded in this all-important country over there!
When somebody brandishes a number, they send out the baying hyenas to THOROUGHLY DEBUNK the reports.
Now, you tell me, what the FUCK is going on here?
You tell me what’s important: The methodology, or the fact that your government doesn’t want you to know how many people are getting killed and wounded over there.
I want to see one of you lying Bush-bonesmokers tell me what the real number of killed and wounded is for all parties to this war, and why we should believe your numbers. And if you can’t make such an assertion and back it up, then shut the hell up.
The Other Steve
I’m a computer programmer. I probably spent 2 years in college doing nothing but logic classes. What you’ve described is a hypothetical syllogism.
You can write it thusly:
P → Q.
Q → R.
Therefore, P → R.
Consider this english example from the wiki article:
If I do not wake up, then I cannot go to work.
If I cannot go to work, then I will not get paid.
Therefore, if I do not wake up, then I will not get paid.
It’s a totally reasonable argument to be made. So I guess I’m just totally baffled at what your point is.
ThymeZone
How long has it been since your last THOROUGH DEBUNKING, Other Steve?
We can’t think straight if we don’t have a clean colon.
The Other Steve
Someone answer this for me. Not a lefty, one of the fruitloops.
What difference does this study make?
If you’ve got 50,000 dead, or 100,000, or 200,000 or 600,000 iraqis killed.
What difference does it make?
Either the continued presence of American troops is justified or it is not. The number of dead should not matter.
I don’t recall Franklin Roosevelt adding up the numbers and saying “Oh my god, there have been 20 million people killed in this war. We must stop now!”
So can you please explain why do you care?
The Other Steve
And nobody on the right has answered my question.
This study, on the State Dept website uses a similar methodology to estimate deaths in Darfur:
http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/fs/2005/45105.htm
Why is it wrong?
Krista
Do you feel any different? Did you bleed?
Pb
harrison,
Thanks for the link, that UN survey looks interesting as well. The first thing I’d look at is when they were each fielded. Estimating from the current Lancet study, I’d say their range for violent deaths in that time period would be 46,800 – 127,400. The UN, on the other hand, found 18,000 – 29,000 war-related deaths. So there’s some difference there, but then, I’d imagine that not all ‘violent’ deaths are necessarily ‘war related’.
Tsulagi
Can’t argue with A=B, B=C, then A=C. Incontrovertible. Iron clad. Let’s try his math giving the same close scrutiny to values.
Republican (A) = Foley (B)
Foley (B) = stupid gutless pedophile (C)
Therefore, Republicans = stupid gutless pedophiles. As you said, indisputable! Thanks for clearing that up.
Pb
The Other Steve,
I believe he was putting that forward as an example of a reasonable argument, and then postulating that the argument Lancet actually made wasn’t reasonable, and therefore, that’s why he didn’t feel the need to respond reasonably to it, or something.
John D.
Um, harrison?
I just read through all 160 pages of that report. Can you tell me which page has the total deaths? I was unable to find it.
The Other Steve
You can’t do that, because A and B aren’t equivalent. Because B is a member of A, but not all A are B. So they aren’t equivalent.
The Other Steve
No, because he said the Lancet presents you with.
Was he saying that wasn’t true because A != B, which breaks the whole chain?
I didn’t see that, he seemed to unlease a variety of foul language and insults instead of a reasoned argument.
The Other Steve
How is it that we can trust the UN when it confirms rightwing lunacy, but we can’t trust the UN when it differs from rightwing lunacy?
All this flip flopping is making me dizzy.
demimondian
Excellent question!
The UN ILCS (Iraq Living Condition Survey) was not primarily intended to determine mortality, but rather to investigate the direct effects of the ongoing fighting on, specifically, women and children. No effort was made to account for all deaths in all households, but rather to investigate the effects of the war on what the UN believed to be the most vulnerable populations in Iraq. As a result, if either study were to be preferred, the Lancet 2004 study would have been more likely to be correct.
The truth is, though, that the question is moot. The other fact that people often ignore is that the UN study was performed months earlier, very early in the war, and that there had been extensive fighting between the two periods in which the data sets were collected (except in Erbil and Dahook, both cities in the relatively peaceful Kurdish portion of the nation, in which there have been few casulaties at all.) Thus, the two figures are not, in fact, in conflict with one another, any more than the claim of 600K excess deaths now is in conflict with the 2004 claim of 100K excess deaths.
Next question?
Steve
I see what you’re getting at. So this is where you direct me to one of the scientific papers which says that human activity is not a significant factor in climate change? Oh wait, there don’t seem to be any in existence.
See, the thing about the Exxon-funded scientists isn’t so much that they get funded by Exxon. It’s that they have a way of making their “scientific” claims on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, as opposed to publishing actual peer-reviewed studies.
That’s a good question. The answer is that they didn’t really use the same methodoloty, just the same basic statistical technique. In the U.N. study, Iraqis were asked a question about deaths in their household (one question out of hundreds in the survey), and “war-related” was just one out of several categories. Deaths due to crime or sectarian violence simply wouldn’t be counted as “war-related.”
Whereas the Lancet study uses simple subtraction to measure the difference between the death rates before and after the invasion, and doesn’t attempt to make a qualitative assessment of whether the additional deaths were directly “war-related.”
ThymeZone
Just a minute, Steve. The UN found no WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003, and as you very well know, they were wrong, and we had to go to war. Luckily we got in there in time and averted the WMD threat.
t. jasper parnell
Hey,
This confab is all peachy and such, although you ought check crookedtimber.org, but this is highlarrious.
Tsulagi
I know that. I don’t believe his “A” is equivalent to his “B” either. That’s why I said “giving the same close scrutiny.” Maybe he can clear that up in his thorough debunking of the actual study. Look forward to it.
Cyrus
I guess I’m too thick for you. I just don’t understand. I thought a THOROUGH DEBUNKING would include numbers and math and talk about methodology and stuff, but yours curiously doesn’t. The part John Cole picked out and ridiculed seemed to be the highlight of it. Because no amount of procrastination is too much for me, I even read your three “better responses.” I haven’t checked the secondary links, but the posts themselves are 50 percent arguments from incredulity, 40 percent ad hominems, and 10 percent office e-mail addresses of the researchers. And what you called the “definitive answer” was… an impassioned anecdote, yes, but similarly devoid of math or methodology.
At first, the consensus seemed to be that you were too lazy to actually do a THOROUGH DEBUNKING when you said you would. Since you’ve replied here, I think you just don’t know how.
(Yes, I made up those 50-40-10 numbers. But at least I’m not too, um, cowardly to admit it.)
You’re responding to “Particularly if you’re an ankle-biting, ad-hominem-wielding, coward,” right? You know, not to play “gotcha”, but I love how you concede the first two parts of that. Do you believe the first two are irrelevant and totally part of acceptable discourse (I’ll give you “ankle-biting,” since I don’t know what it means, but I would have argued with the “ad-hominem-weilding” or at least tried to get points for maturity by admitting it) or did you just bristle at any impugnation of your manhood before you had the chance to notice the rest?
The Other Steve
I see the lunatics refuse to answer my question.
Why does it matter?
Sine.Qua.Non
Great bit of irony, John! I love it.
Faux News
Other Steve: If MacBuckets and his ilk won’t respond to your valid question regarding the methodolody of determing mortality rates in Dafur (Sudan), then the LEAST they can do is answer my previous question:
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
ThymeZone
I question the methodology behind this joke.
And I demand to know why Mac Fuckwits is covering up for the fact that the US Government has no reliable figures on Iraqi casualties in this war. They don’t care? They know, but won’t tell us?
What do they not know, and when did they not know it?
Punchy
I have a feeling you’re about to get a link to RedState or Powerline that will highlight what one poster thinks is the dead count.
THAT is what passes for “science” to these fucking idiots.
Pb
It’s in the Analytical Report, on page number 54 (page 55 of the PDF). And as I said above, their estimate is roughly 18,000 – 29,000. Interestingly enough, they also mention the first Lancet study, and admit that their estimate is an underestimate.
RSA
Try this.
John D.
Ah, I was looking in the tabluation (Volume I).
gus
Don’t know about these potent pharmaceuticals, but guess what miracle drug does seem to help: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/health/20061010-1531-health-marijuana.html
The Ghost of Santa Claus
Satan always keeps his promises.
You of all people should know that… Chester!
Ho ho ho, bitch!
David Zincavage
I happened across a posting discussing the controversial record of the Lancet under Richard Horton’s editorship, which may be of interest to some readers here.
http://rwdb.blogspot.com/2006/10/lancet-medical-journal-or-activist-rag.html