Daniel Davies takes apart another bogus critique of the Lancet study, this one from the British Foreign Office that relies on comparing apples to oranges. Michael Lewis at Iraq Analysis has a more detailed rebuttal.
Remarkably, Tech Central Station has published an article by Iain Murray, who acknowledges that
The study itself is actually much more statistically sound than many commentators (including some in these pages) have suggested, and it certainly suggests that the mortality rate is worse in the unstable insurgency-ridden Iraq after the ouster of Saddam's regime than during the last days of his tyranny.
and
perfectly good science like the Iraq study has been the subject of unfounded criticism and dismissal
Murray does take issue with the way the Lancet presented the results, objecting to the fact that they described the study as finding "that around 100 000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the invasion" when the death toll included combatants as well as civilians. This is a legitimate objection, but Murray makes too much of it, since the great majority of the excess deaths were not combatants. Murray also objects to the timing of the publication complaining that it was an attempt by the Lancet to influence another country's election. This objection strikes me as being without merit. I think it is better that voters have more information about the state of affairs in Iraq rather than less. I suspect that Murray is complaining because this information was damaging to his and Tech Central Station's preferred candidate. That does not strike me as a reason to delay publication till after the election.
Some of those supposed criticisms are just laughable. As to the timing of the report: The authors of most medical research papers want their results to save lives. Publishing it just before the election was necessary to have any chance of actually accomplishing that goal. Sadly, it did not work. The fact that it was rushed into publication does not cast doubt on the motives of the authors or the publisher. When the SARS outbreak occurred, the NEJM rushed the publication of the first papers of the subject. Nothing sinister in that; they wanted to save lives.
It says 'the Lancert study' [Oops. Fixed. TDL]
The FCO briefing uses the author's own figures; 200 k excess deaths for Falluja. This "devastating critique" points out that it is 200k excess deaths for the Falluja area.
still doesn't address the fact that this estimate is laughably high.
The response, "our data was so wacky that we called this one an outlier, and didn't include it in our analysis" kind of begs the question of how reliable the rest of the study is. Indeed the authors agree; they state (I paraphrase) that the Falluja datapoint calls into question the precision of their whole analysis.
that's an understatement.
j
"This is a legitimate objection, but Murray makes too much of it, since the great majority of the excess deaths were not combatants."
The "great majority?" What's that...like 70%, 90%, or what?
And are you referring to the "excess deaths" in the study, or the "excess deaths" in the whole country?
How do you know all the excess deaths were not combatants. Furthermore how do you know the Iraqi's were not lying. There is no proof at all that the Iraqi's selected for the survey were not lying. There is absolutely no scientific reason to take what the Iraqi's say as the truth.