I asked Les Roberts to comment on Moore's piece. He wrote:
I read with interest the October 18th editorial by Steven Moore reviewing our study reporting that an estimated 650,000 deaths were associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. I had spoken with Mr. Moore the week before when he said that he was writing something for the Wall Street Journal to put this survey in perspective. I am not surprised that we differed on the current relevance of 10 year-old census data in a country that had experienced a major war and mass exodus. I am not surprised at his rejection of my suggestion that the references in a web report explaining the methodology for lay people and reporters was not the same as the references in our painstakingly written peer reviewed article. What is striking is Mr. Moore's statement that we did not collect any demographic data, and his implication that this makes the report suspect. This is curious because, not only did I tell him that we asked about the age and gender of the living residents in the houses we visited, but Mr. Moore and I discussed, verbally and by e-mail, his need to contact the first author of the paper, Gilbert Burnham, in order to acquire this information as I did not have the raw data. I would assume that this was simply a case of multiple misunderstandings except our first report in the Lancet in 2004 referenced in our article as describing the methods states, "...interviewees were asked for the age and sex or every current household member." Thus, it appears Mr. Moore had not read the description of the methods in our reports. It is not important whether this fabrication that "no demographic data was collected" is the result of subconscious need to reject the results or whether it was intentional deception. What is important, is that Mr. Moore and many others are profoundly uncomfortable that our government might have inadvertently triggered 650,000 deaths.
Most days in the US, more than 5000 people die. We do not see the bodies. We cannot, from our household perspective, sense the fraction from violence. We rely on a functional governmental surveillance network to do that for us. No such functional network exists in Iraq. Our report suggests that on top of the 300 deaths that must occur in Iraq each day from natural causes; there have been approximately 500 "extra" deaths mostly from violence. Of any high profile scientific report in recent history, ours might be the easiest to verify. If we are correct, in the morgues and graveyards of Iraq, most deaths during the occupation would have been due to violence. If Mr. Bush's "30,000 more or less" figure from last December is correct, less than 1 in 10 deaths has been from violence. Let us address the discomfort of Mr. Moore and millions of other Americans, not by uninformed speculation about epidemiological techniques, but by having the press travel the country and tell us how people are dying in Iraq.
So Moore was completely wrong on both arguments he made: the sample size was not too small and they did collect demographic data.
Correction: (added Jan 12, 2008) Les Roberts was mistaken in his comment above. He writes:
I was wrong! Shannon cleaned and analyzed the data. I never saw the
raw forms. We collected age and gender on everyone in 2004. That was
the plan in 2006. My understanding is that they did this for some
houses in the start but as that was the most lengthy part of the
interview they just started recording how many people were in the house
and the age and gender of the dead. Their focus in the field was on
security and Riyadh said that this made the visits to each area a lot
shorter....and I cannot second-guess that judgment call. Thus, at the
end, we could not calculate an gender or age specific mortality or make
a demographic profile because it was missing for many (I think most)
households. In 2004, our IMR and <5MR were so imprecise as to be
meaningless because children were so few and I know that led to Riyadh's
decision.I was mistaken when I spoke to Steven Moore, and I was mistaken when I
wrote to you.
The observed pre-invasion death rate was very close to other well-known estimates, including that of the CIA.
For an interesting review of the methods used by the Lancet study, by a statistician, see here:
http://www.stats.org/stories/the_science_ct_dead_oct17_06.htm
Wow. Good reply by Roberts.
Thank you for asking him Tim.
Sorry to go all tangential, but I must say here that I suppose RP Jr will find something to harrumph about in Roberts' words, but I believe most by now would say "Eh." or something like it.
Best,
D
Despite Les' eloquent response, he has yet to reveal any comparison of demographic information for the 2006 survey to the 1997 Iraqi census, the 2003 update to that census, the 2004 UNDP/ILCS survey or any other demographic instrument.
"I asked Les Roberts to comment on Moore's piece."
Ask him where we can go to see the 650,000 death certificates.
Dave S. demands of Les Roberts:
"Ask him where we can go to see the 650,000 death certificates."
I would have answered simply (and snidely) "Iraq."
But Mr. Roberts had already answered that complaint, and all the others, with his last sentence above:
"Let us address the discomfort of Mr. Moore and millions of other Americans, not by uninformed speculation about epidemiological techniques, but by having the press travel the country and tell us how people are dying in Iraq."
While you're at it, ask Les if the propaganda work he's done for the Socialist Worker pays fat bank, or if he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart.
"But Mr. Roberts had already answered that complaint..."
Yeah, the answer is: Only special people like us can see those death certificates!
Ah, Mr Moore, your response is interesting. Your exchange with Roberts was in writing, so you've been able to go back and check what he really said. From your failure to dispute that you were told that they *did* collect demographic information, we can conclude that Roberts' version is accurate and yours is an invention. When can we expect the WSJ to be publishing a correction to your piece?
Anyway...
...here's why these little surveys don't really work as was proved in the FAO 1995 "study" on infant mortality in Iraq:
'As a check on the accuracy of these data, a subsequent study in 1996 (45) selected 44 newly randomized clusters throughout Baghdad and repeated 20 clusters from 1995. Only 80% of the mothers interviewed in repeat clusters could be confirmed as having been previously interviewed the year before. Among these 237 mothers, 96% of all births were confirmed on both surveys but 65 of the 74 deaths reported among them in 1995 were not reported again in 1996. Nine of the 18 deaths reported in 1996 had not been reported in 1995...'
http://www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html
Why don't they work? Because people lie (including folks like Les Roberts, I suspect), that's why. In this case more than 50% of the people they checked on, changed their story (don't hold your breath waiting for Les & co. to do a follow-up...not that I'd believe what they said a follow-up showed).
However, the fact that people lie a rug on these mortality surveys isn't going to stop Roberts & co. from conducting surveys of this sort, nor will it stop the The Lancet from publishing these "studies", because the idea isn't to get at the truth, the idea is to spew propaganda.
However, if leftys want to believe in this tripe, fine by me. What they believe isn't going to stop the United States from smacking down guys like the Baathists (and their terrorist proxies)...so believe what you will, leftys.
And when are you going to append a correction for misspelling "Gorton," Tim?
Unfrickinbelievable. I'll give you one thing, Stephen E. Moore. You're an exemplary representative for, and embodiment of, The Cause. May you be rewarded accordingly.
Well ... what this non-lefty believes is that there's zero chance of a wingnut blowhard ever getting off his fat arse to go to Iraq to do something useful like this survey has done, when trumpeting your ideology from an easy chair is so relatively satisfying.
Bah - I reckon that should have been "asinine ideology".
Steven Moore,
Whats your statistics education and training?
"Despite Les' eloquent response, he has yet to reveal any comparison of demographic information for the 2006 survey to the 1997 Iraqi census, the 2003 update to that census, the 2004 UNDP/ILCS survey or any other demographic instrument."
Why would the age and sex of the sample household members, even if they weren't representative of that in the population at large or in the clusters, bias the estimation of violent deaths experienced by the household. After all wouldn't the the exposure of the household to violence mainly be a function of chance or location, not age or sex.
Granted homebound women and children would be less likely to be killed by violence. But most of the sample violent deaths were in adult males. So unless the households surveyed were all adult male, there should be no bias.
The objective isn't to cast doubt on the methodology, chew2. It's to insinuate fraud.
First, you ask "When did you stop beating your wife?" Then when the subject stops being "cooperative" with your line of questioning and protests the mischaracterizations of his answers, you can accuse him of failing to be "transparent" and having something to hide.
"Well ... what this non-lefty believes is that there's zero chance of..."
...there being any validity to the data collected by Les Roberts and co., using a method that has been demonstrated to be completely worthless (as The Lancet well knows, seeing as how the results of the original bogus FAO study was published in The Lancet!)?
Well, you would be right to do so.
I'm not sure what all that "chickenhawk" stuff is all about, though.
To add in a couple more data points -
According to a piece here, there are "about 275,000 bullets fired in anger per day by U.S. forces". It's Steve Sailer's blog and thus obviously requires careful checking, but he does give the link to congressional hearings which cited a 10-million-round-per-month ammunition use, which puts his figure in the ballpark. Looking, then, at the 183,000 coalitionised Iraqis, that would mean that (if we assume that some 1/3 of the deaths were caused by bombing) each dead Iraqi took some 94 kg of bullets. This fits neatly with an estimate in the book "Gunpowder" that killing an enemy takes, in the broad, his own weight in bullets. If, on the other hand, there are only 30,000 or so enemy casualties, then each insurgent took nine times his own body weight in bullets, which would have people mining cemeteries.
Second up, Hoge, C.W., Castro, C.A., Messer S.C., McGurk, D. Cotting, D.I. & Koffman, R.L. (2004), Combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, mental health problems, and barriers to care, New England Journal of Medicine, 351, 13-22 reported that 28% of combat soldiers deployed to Iraq reported being responsible for the death of a non-combatant. Over a million Americans have rotated through Iraq so far, about 300,000 of them in combat units; 28% of that is 84,000, which is less (and there would be overlap where two or more soldiers shot the same civilian, which might or might not outweigh those who shot more than one) but still in the ballpark.
"The objective isn't to cast doubt on the methodology, chew2. It's to insinuate fraud."
Who's insinuating? If Les Roberts or the editors at The Lancet claimed that the sky was blue, I'd go outside to take a look...just to be sure they weren't lying again.
Dave you'd find if you knew what to look for that despite one or two errors it's undeniably made in recent years the Lancet remains one of the few finest medical journals in the world, publishing some of the most significant and worthwhile research.
It'd be just a wingnut fantasy, I'm sorry, to believe anything remotely like your "method that has been demonstrated to be completely worthless" bluster unless you had the chops to back that up in a scientifically argued opinion or, perhaps better still, to go to Iraq to do some of your own dangerous debunking work rather than just loudly bloviating from afar. So you don't like what you've read about this study? - the world has heard you already. Now what?
Lindsay Beyerstein -
As has been pointed out on other threads on this site, the CIA figures are not particularly reliable, unless you accept their frankly unlikely claim in this year's world factbook that the death rate is now 5.37/1000, i.e. even lower than before the war.
"While you're at it, ask Les if the propaganda work he's done for the Socialist Worker pays fat bank, or if he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart." --Dave Surls
Dave, you don't know much about the wealth, or rather lack thereof, of old red organisations, do you? People doing propaganda for those are expected to pay for it out of their own pockets. "Highly paid communist agitators", that was apparently what newspapers used to write about food riots during the great depression... It's even more ridiculous today than then. Take it from one who knows a cople of real fossil communists: they _don't_ make any money from it.
Poor Dave Surls. It seems like his world is unfolding because the Lancet study - now being defended by many epidemiologists and academics in both the US and UK (see Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
- shatters his view that the US-UK axis would never commit mass murder. Wake up, man. There are plenty of historical precedents. The US regime is being run by a bunch of crazy outaws who couldn't give a damn about human life. When neocon stalwart and Bush adviser Richard Perle stated in 1999 that we need a 'total war', and that the effects of this total war should be seen as 'creative destruction' where 'our children will sing great songs about us in the future', he was talking about Iraq and the other agressive intentions of the war party. The civilians currently running US foreign policy are truly a mad, evil lot. Surls can only resort to frantic pedantics against es Roberts in an effort to redeem the vile DC administration.
Jeff Harvey - I think that may have been Michael Ledeen, and in 2001.
http://www.alternet.org/story/11938/
And I believe he denies that by 'creative destruction' he was referring to violence, a claim which is pretty much born out if you look at the context. Though I don't really want to defend him, I do think he's a bit of a scary rightwinger.
The study Surls cites indeed suffered from those problems -but it took place in one, poor urban slum neighbourhood of one city, not using internationally trained surveyers. It's not surprising that it gave an inaccurate infant mortality measurement for a whole country. The Lancet study does not suffer from these problems and took pains to reduce in-cluster bias which was another problem with the FAO study.
Lopakin,
There is debate as to whether it is Ledeen or Perle - both are scary wingnuts.
Three things strike me about the denial brigade who populate Tim's excellent site, in spite of the broad academic support for the Lancet studies amongst experts in the field, the reliability of the cluster sampling method, and the extensive peer-reviews the papers went through. First, they are like alcoholics, who, when first informed of their affliction, claim that 'the opposite of everything is true'. They are so indoctrinated with the myth of the 'basic benevolence' of the US and its proxies that any evidence demolishing this must be evil, sordid nonsense. The ice is melting beneath them, and they insist that somehow they'll float above the water when the ice is gone. Second, they have extensive memory holes. Piles of evidence of past US atrocities has been accumulated, from SE Asia to Latin America, but the denialists have long since sent these inconvenient truths (with apologies for stealing this from Al Gore) into their mental black holes. Finally, the denialists never explain why aggressing nations (and this applies to very many countries) never tally the victims of their military policies. If the Roberts and Burnham studies are so flawed, on a mere 50,000 dollar budget from MIT, why don't the US and UK governments, with bags of money to throw away on their imperial fantasies, invest the paltry sum of a few millon dollars to get at the real figure? Of course, the answer is simple and twofold: first, any accurate count would be an embarrassment for the US-UK regimes, because its likely to be at least in the high reaches of 5 figures and quite possibly up to half a million or more (as Burnham et al have postulated). Either figure, if definitively arrived at, would emphasize the nature of the great crime that has been committed. This is my second point - that neither nation wants to make a count because they know that the total number of civlians vanquished in 'Operation Iraqi Liberation' (OIL) - oops - I mean Freedom (OIF) is stupendously high.
When John Bolton, a few weeks into the conflict in 2003, claimed in an interview with John Pilger that he didn't think that 10,000 dead civilians (Pilger's quote) was all that high, it says all I need to know about the vile nature of the DC regime.
I will be very pleasantly surprised if Steven Moore even acknowledges the discrepancy between what he wrote and his implicit admission that Burnham et al. did collect demographic information, and that Les Roberts told him so.
It is too late for the WSJ editorial board, though[1]; they've already used the "no demographic information" canard in yesterday's editorial titled "The 655,000 Fraud." They also call the IBC statement a "devastating critique."
With what appears to be a perfect tone-deafness to irony, the WSJ then quotes the IBC:
There is not even time to draw breath between the approving use of the IBC's statement and the dismissal of those (including the IBC) who consider the death toll to be a "human ... tragedy." How to reconcile these apparently conflicting positions? Here goes: Saddam's mass murders are "well documented" and these deaths aren't -- and anyway, trying to count the current dead is the same as "suggesting there's no difference" between those deaths and these.
The effort involved in keeping all these positions straight is starting to take its toll. Even for the WSJ, the tone of this editorial bordered on the hysterical, and some of the loopier denizens of the Web are starting to come noticeably unglued in comment threads.
[1] Some would say it's been too late for a long time.
"The study Surls cites indeed suffered from those problems..."
And, so do the "studies" carried out by Roberts et al...only more so.
They may be coming unglued , but the sad fact is that in the US the Lancet paper went almost unnoticed, I think. There just hasn't been that much mainstream interest in the number of Iraqis dying and even less in the question of how many are dying directly at the hands of US forces.
The WSJ is doing everyone a favor by writing editorials blasting the paper--there's been nothing in the NYT about it beyond the original article buried deep inside. No editorial calling for a definitive count of the dead. No opinion pieces mentioning it. No letters to the editor about it. (I have written one, but it was angrily directed at their coverage of civilian casualties, and not the kind of letter they publish.)
LES ROBERTS SPEAKS
"Earlier this month, Les Roberts formally announced his candidacy to gain the Democratic nomination for New York State's 24th District seat in the United States House of Representatives."
http://www.thatsmycongress.com/lesroberts.html
Golly, gee. Les is trying to build political career for himself, is he?
Who woulda thunk it?
More from the same source...
"...Well, I took that $20,000 and I flew to Jordan. I paid someone to smuggle me into Baghdad. He was an officer in Saddam's military. He had been in the military more than 20 years, and the Americans came, and now he was driving a car."
Why, how very honest and aboveboard of you, Les. I'm sure that entering the country dishonestly, and illegaly, and in the company of one of Hussein's Baathist henchmen will put you in solid with our Democrat Party, and firmly establish your bona fides with the ever-clueless left.
depp=true
Dave Surls:
I'm sorry, but I've checked all of the standards for honest and rigorous debate. None of the demand that families of the deceased send you death certificates simply because you whine about them.
If you are not whining that you, personally, have not seen them, and are instead whining that the Iraqi government has not provided statistics that guarantee that these death certificates have been seen, let me remind you of a few facts.
1) Iraq is, at best, poised on the brink of civil war.
2) The Iraqi government has priorities *much* higher than collecting and counting death certificates; if they had a perfectly accurate count, I'd wonder what need of still-living human beings they were ignoring, and
3) governmnents are capable of lying. Really! No, it doesn't violate the laws of physics!
80% of the deaths reported were certified, and the certificate was seen by the Iraqis conducting the survey. We have good reason to believe that the official numbers could be incorrect, even if we were assured the Iraqi government wanted to provide accurate numbers, and we have no such assurance.
In short, we have good reason to believe hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the war, and those who have the moral courage to face that fact are trying to find the truth. The moral cowards are turning away because they don't like it.
Hm? No, I didn't just call you a moral coward. I just said that you'd be one if you didn't try to figure out the truth.
Censor away, Mr. Lambert it won't change the facts a whit.
"If you are not whining that you, personally, have not seen them..."
I make it a policy never to whine about things that don't exist (like 650,000 imaginary death certificates, for example).
You must have confused me with someone else.
"Only special people like us can see those death certificates!"
Er... was Roberts supposed to have collected them and brought them back to the US for you? You should have mentioned that a priori.
"While you're at it, ask Les if the propaganda work he's done for the Socialist Worker pays fat bank, or if he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart."
I imagine it pays about as well as the study he did of the Congo war which was so widely quoted by the Bushies.
"Because people lie (including folks like Les Roberts, I suspect), that's why."
I suppose that's supposed to be an indication of how happy the average Iraqi is to have the US protecting them.
i love science blogs--such a mellow vibe, just the facts, ma'am and all that.
let's see--stephen e. moore has enough credibility (as measured by one's ability to reach the [important] masses, and the WSJ ed page is a key arbiter of such) to write a major piece on the very important Lancet piece. he uses that credibility to lie to the very people to whom he is writing. his lie supports his initial supposition, unsurprisingly--that is what liars do. their "mistakes" always redound to their benefit--that's what makes them lies (not literally, but you all get the point, no?)
and here, on a post where a) the lie is called to account, and b) the author of the lie comes on and calls it an "eloquent response" to his lie, we have a bunch of serious people trying to have a debate with a serious interlocutor. so very thesis-defense, so very scientific method.
oh, your quaint naivety. these people use such a studied tone in order to get away with the crap they spew.
Surls,
Since you're so damned smart, what is the correct count of "extra" Iraqi deaths? You sound like a Bush administration insider- anti-science and pro-faith based conjecture. Unfortunately for you, your faith in Bush is a real loser.
'As a check on the accuracy of these data, a subsequent study in 1996 (45) selected 44 newly randomized clusters throughout Baghdad and repeated 20 clusters from 1995. Only 80% of the mothers interviewed in repeat clusters could be confirmed as having been previously interviewed the year before. Among these 237 mothers, 96% of all births were confirmed on both surveys but 65 of the 74 deaths reported among them in 1995 were not reported again in 1996. Nine of the 18 deaths reported in 1996 had not been reported in 1995...'
You don't have to be especially smart to see what this implies about the accuracy of these absurd surveys.
I mean you have to be smarter than the average "anti-war" idiotlogue, but that isn't saying much.
You don't have to be especially smart to see what this implies about the accuracy of these absurd surveys.
Innumerate, statisically illiterate and methodologically headblind, Mr. Suris.
DO THE MATH, and see what this does to the accuracy.
"DO THE MATH"
I've done so. Let me know if you need help figuring out what percentage of Iraqis surveyed lied, and couldn't be bothered with keeping their lies straight, in the 1995 FAO mortality study.
I'll assign a third-grader to help leftys who just don't get it.
No looking over the shoulder of the kid at the next desk, now.
Things I've learned from Dave Surls:
There's big money in Socialism.
If one "study" employed flawed methodology, all "studies" are worthless. More so if you place quotation marks around the words "study" and "studies".
"Anti-war" people are idiots; ergo, "smart" people are pro-war.
Leftys must have statistical analysis explained to them by third-graders; ergo, there are no lefty third-graders.
The plural of "lefty" is "leftys".
We are forever indebted to you, Dave Surls, for your candor, your wisdom, your obviously superior intellect, and that je ne sais quoi which makes reading your comments such a delight.
"Things I've learned from Dave Surls:"
The only things you need to learn are: that you can't rely on the word of the people being studied, the people conducting the study, or the people publishing it.
It's not that hard to fathom.
Keep working on it.
For the record, it turns out that Roberts was wrong when he claimed above that age information had been gathered for the households in L2. Perhaps he owes Moore an apology?
or the people who started the illegal (i.e. criminal) war.
It's not that hard to fathom.
Keep working on it.
It would be nice if you dated the correction above. Also, you need a second correction. Details here.
I've dated the correction. I don't believe that I need to make a second correction.
Thanks for adding the date. But, you quote Les Roberts above as claiming:
"they [the interviewers] just started recording how many people were in the house and the age and gender of the dead."
That's wrong. They recorded the gender of everyone in the house, not just the total number of occupants. I don't think that Roberts is being malicious, I just think he has a tenuous grasp of what really happened. So, best to correct these mistakes before they spread.