The Lancet Study Refuses To Die
Deepak Chopra, the ‘new-age’ guru whose radical views on the non-physical nature of physical nature (I’m not making that up) we’ve had occasion to ridicule before, is the latest to resurrect the Lancet study ’100,000 Iraqi civilians killed’ number, even after that number has been discarded by such anti-Iraq War organizations as the U.N. and Iraq Body Count. Chopra, you see, is so smart that he’s apparently only just discovered the study and feels we are equally ill-informed:
I don’t expect to influence anyone who screams his opinions, but for those who might have worried that I was casting out imaginary numbers, the following may be useful:
The original estimate that coalition forces, but primarily the U.S., may have killed 100,000 Iraqis unnecessarily appeared in the leading British medical journal, The Lancet. Links to this report are widely available at Google.com. Here is one from the CBC news service in Canada.
If I may respond:
Deepak, congrats on finding the Lancet study months and months after it has been widely dissected and discarded by people who actually keep up with these matters. I’m interested in knowing why the United Nations and Iraq Body Count, two organizations in opposition to the war, would be inclined to circulate figures at 1/4 of that level. In the future, if I may be so bold, you might review the tens of thousands of posts that have related to this issue before reverting to the least credible source available.
Oh, and enjoy your weekend…
If I’m not mistaken the 25,000 casualty number is itself grossly inflated, as it counts all casualties, including those inflicted by Baathists, and therefore clearly does not limit itself to “civilians killed unnecessarily” by the US.
Furthermore, Deepak may wish to ponder this little paradox:
1. The people murdering Iraqi civilians include supporters of the Baath regime.
2. The Baath regime used to control all of Iraq.
3. Therefore, the people who are currently murdering Iraqi civilians were, at one point in time, far less constrained in their ability to carry out and inflict the violence they are currently inflicting.
Then again, if he just now discovered the Lancet study, he probably won’t get around to pondering this little paradox until some point in his next lifetime.
Sean P, indeed, the 25,000 figure is not limited to Coalition-inflicted casualties, a point I should have reiterated. Thanks for the reminder…
The 100,000 casualty report was discarded by the UN among others because the margin of error is plus or minus 96,000. (I’m not kidding about this, you can look in the report.) In other words, the study says the following: based on their sampling they can say with 95% certainty that the true value lies between 4,000 and 196,000 casualties. The reason for such an outrageous margin of error is the type of sampling used. In this case, they used a variety of random clustered sampling. This type of study (because it would be impossible to poll the entire country) collects data from a few randomly chosen places. Get a coupla data places in Bagdad, some in the Sunni triangle, where there has been a much greater level of warfare and the elevated casualty numbers get applied to the entire country.
Rob, you are exactly right…I wasn’t sure of the exact figures, so thanks for the reminder, but I remembered reading when the report first came out (from Fred Kaplan at Slate, among others) that there was an absolutely staggering gap between the two confidence extremes…have a good one…