Americans ignorant of Iraqi deaths

I find it hard to believe that 8% of polled think that under 1000 Iraqis have died. Perhaps there was some ambiguity in the question? Maybe they thought they were giving the estimate about the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the Coalition instead, or something?

One could always click the link and read what the question was. It was:

"16. Just your best guess, how many Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq since the war began there in March, 2003?"

Doesn't sound terribly ambiguous. But given the rotten state of American news coverage, should we expect them to know better?

One can't get outraged at the lies told to go to war if one doesn't know the death toll. Very simple, yet complex, like Murricans themselves.

Best,

D

"I find it hard to believe that 8% of polled think that under 1000 Iraqis have died."

All I can say is, please don't misunderestimate the state of ignorance of the American people. After all, these are the same folks who know far more about OJ's gardener and Anna Nicole Smith's hair stylist than they do about Iraq (including where it is on the map).

I am from the US, know people from many different countries, and i'd simply have to say that Americans are by far the most ignorant -- indeed clueless-- people I know.

The really pathetic -- and inexcusable -- part of this is that they are ignorant because they choose to be.

I know this from personal experience with several members of my own family, some of whom have advanced degress from Ivy league schools.

For example, like Bush, my brother in law has a degree from Harvard Business school and he has backed most of what Bush has done over the last few years (up until just recently, when Bush started being described even by some of his former staunch supporters as an incompetent loser -- which was too much even for my BIL to stomach.).

QrazyQat: Huh, then. I'd expect that question to in fact lead to errors in the opposite direction, since it isn't clear that the number of deaths is supposed to be limited to the additional deaths due to the conflict.

Maybe 'since the war' began there is kinda contentious because it suggests that we are still in a war (which many disagree about), and potentially makes people think that we are talking about deaths during the initial attack itself?

I mean, I am very incredulous at this, because the number of under 1000 is something is not supported by *any* media source. Even Fox and its ilk fall onto the official government figures, or on to the IBC figure. Similarly, I'd think there would be more liberals taking the poll (7-24% of those polled, it seems) who would pick the 250k+ figure from the Lancet report. More than 5%, at least. It does seem that many people have collectively misplaced the decimal point.

"It does seem that many people have collectively misplaced the decimal point."

Decimals-schmessimals.

Another characteristic of the average American is that he is innumerate -- which is really just another type of ignorance, of course.

As an American on a site that seems replete with Australians, let me add a few thoughts on why Americans are so far behind the power curve on this. I do want to add that these reason might be more global and not just American in nature. But I'm from the States, so I'm merely relating what I see around me.

1. The U.S. mainstream press is conservative. By "conservative", I mean "cautious", not politically conservative.

2. Americans get most of their news from TV which is usually superficial and lacking nuance. And then we have the Fox effect, which drives TV news conservative (by this I mean politically).

3. Americans are poor at math and science. So forget it when it comes to using statistics or a peer-reviewed study.

4. The American media is *really* bad at math and science. The vast majority studies English, poli-sci, or history, which creates all kinds of problems when it comes to explaining something that requires mathematical understanding.

5. We are a large country, and in many ways quite provincial. Our culture expands out, and takes little in. In short, Americans don't give a shit about other countries.

And there's more, of course.....

"In short, Americans don't give a shit about other countries."

As an American myself, I would rephrase this slightly to place the emphasis where it lies: on us Americans.

Americans care primarily about ourselves -- and because we like to feel good about ourselves (feel that our actions are always noble)-- we don't like to even be presented with information that indicates otherwise and thereby creates cognitive dissonance.

American ignorance is a "chosen ignorance", which is why we (as a people) choose to elect Presidents and to watch news stations that tell us what we want to hear about ourselves and others.

Jimmy Carter learned the hard way what it means to tell Americans things that they do not want to hear about ourselves -- namely about our wasteful lifestyle.

There is a weird pattern break at the '100,000 to 250,000' category. Following the previous questions, it would have been more consistent to use '100,000 to 500,000' .

"I'd think there would be more liberals taking the poll (7-24% of those polled, it seems) who would pick the 250k+ figure from the Lancet report."

That assumes they have heard about it. Even supposed bastions of liberal-dom in the American media like NPR gave the Lancet study very limited coverage and "balanced" the Lancet findings with "expert opinion" from right wing think tanks, which dismissed the lancet study as "simply not credible".

Most other media outlets who did mention it did so in passing, dismissing it out of hand as "implausible" (just as Bush did, surprise, surprise).

Sometimes surveys give results that accurately represent people's views and/or their world, even though those results may not jibe with our own world view.

Most importantly for us all, the egregious joshd will be proud that his IBC's reporting and arguing and whatever else it is he thinks he's been doing in the war thus far has helped to keep the vast majority of Americans in their preferred state of ignorance, to the point where only one in ten would credit even josh's known-lowball numbers on the scale of the calamity in Iraq. Josh triumphs because at least the American people are not hearing of his competitors' numbers, the ones from the researchers and the Iraqi doctors actually on the ground in what's left of Iraq. Wouldn't want to hear from any scientific studies amid the clamor from josh and his news clippings, would we.

Seems like an odd breakdown of numbers in the question. Shouldn't the highest category have been, say, "More than 1,000,000", to enable the Lancet figure to appear lower down in the table, hence giving it proper credibility?

Obviously, recategorising in this way might have pulled the median up, but isn't the point to include ALL credible figures in the categories? That the pollsters relegated the Lancet figure to the top category (which most respondents will consider 'too high' and only present to pad the table), says a lot about the political decision-making behind the poll.

"But given the rotten state of American news coverage, should we expect them to know better?"
Posted by: QrazyQat | February 24, 2007 01:12 PM

There are a lot of problems with US news media, however they can hardly be held responsible for this.

Short of offerring a free lobotomy with every cable installation what could any US news organisation tell Americans that could convince them what they have seen happen in Iraq for the past 4 years has resulted in 1000 Iraqis dying ?

The fact is a significant proportion of the US population is, for all intents and purposes, retarded. Polls regarding politics, terrorism, 9/11 and the moon landing all bear this out.

Personally I can't think of an area of the US where you wouldn't have had 1000 people die just in 2006, let alone in an entire nation at war for 4 years. Alaska ?

77% of Americans could name two of the seven dwarfs.

24% of Americans could name two supreme court justices.

This proves that we are nation of distracted, ignorant blowhards who are more interested in celebrity and trivia than in world and local events that mihgt conceivably--whoa, kick ass beer commericial!

Wasssssssuuuuuuuuppp!

America confuses the hell out of me.

The majority of Americans I meet both online and in the real world are intelligent, articulate and well-informed.

If we look at educational statistics, we see they are at least as well educated on average as people in other developed countries and ahead of most.

But on a whole range of issues, including this study but also ranging from global warming to health care to evolution, many Americans - a majority in some instances - take positions that seem ill-informed or flat-out irrational.

Plum asks: "Shouldn't the highest category have been, say, "More than 1,000,000", to enable the Lancet figure to appear lower down in the table, hence giving it proper credibility?"

I'll guess they tried out a few test ranges, saw that Americans were guessing really low, and adjusted accordingly. Even for these categories, my countrymen skew to the low end.

I have no explanation why a third of us think fewer than 5,000 have died. Two semi-logical explanations:

1. Misunderstood the question to be how many Iraqis were directly killed by Americans (which is still a likely underestimate).

2. They're war supporters, mad at "the media" and deliberately decided to skew the results.

It would be fascinating to see results for this poll in other countries, especially if done in Iraq.

Brian S., it's possible that some people are rationalising their answer by telling themselves there's been a NET reduction in deaths in Iraq due to the overthrow of Saddam.

America confuses the hell out of me.
The majority of Americans I meet both online and in the real world are intelligent, articulate and well-informed.

I suggest you typically meet well-informed Americans because you prefer to associate with well-informed people, and have developed a variety of effective (but of course imperfect) heuristics for ignoring people who are unlikely to be well-informed. More importantly, you meet new people mostly through your existing social connections, who, like you, favor the well-informed.

I know many Americans who are as ill-informed as these polls indicate. But I live here.

I agree with llewelly.

It's basically a sample selection issue.
Judging based on a sample of those that you associate with -- either by choice or through work -- is not unbiased.

It's not a matter of intelligence or even education level.
I too live here and I even many of the intelligent, well-educated Americans that I know are ignorant on things like the Iraq war and global warming. Perhaps the ignorance is just an act, but I don't think so. They just seem to be oblivious -- BY CHOICE -- to those things that would require them to make personal sacrifices. They resent having anyone tell them what they can and can not do.

They don't like it when someone tells them that they are a large part of the CO2 emissions problem and that might have to change their driving habits in order to cut wrold emissions. So they hide their head under a rock so they don't have to see, cover their ears so that they don't have to hear -- and hope that someone else will deal with the problem. Ditto on Iraq. I seriously doubt most Americans could even find Iraq on a map or tell you anything about the historical context of the current fight between the Sunni and Shia Muslims there.

Most people think that Jimmy Carter was unpopular here in the US because he "failed" to act in the Iran hostage crisis. But the Iran hostage crisis was only an excuse to dump on a President that many Americans resented for quite different reasons -- because he presented them with an unflattering view of themselves. He forced them to look at themselves in the mirror for a change. He told Ameericans that we don't own th world and that we have to live in concert with the rest of the world's inhabitants. He told Americans that WE will have to make sacrifices (turn the lights out when we leave the room, drive smaller cars, carpool, use public transport).

And the reality is also that Carter took the proper course of action with the hostages because all of them came home alive -- which would certainly never have occurred had Bush been in office at the time. He would have bombed the country and the hostages would have been killed. But Americans would have loved it because they love action -- especially aggressive action.

By the way, the reason that many right wing fundamentalist Christians (Pat Robertson, Bush, etc) see Carter as a major threat -- and hence are forever attacking him -- is that he is also an evangelical and because of it has credibility with many evangelicals (the non-fundamentalist ones).

And the fact that Carter has a proven track record of peacemaking in the middle east -- and a Nobel Peace prize -- just drives these Christian fundamentalists bananas.

The primary difference between Carter and the fundamentalists is that Carter adheres to the ideas of the New testament (the nonviolent teachings of Christ) rather than the ideas of the Old Testament (eye for an eye, etc).

I'm usually arguing against JoshD, but it's unfair to use this story to attack IBC, when IBC has done its best to publicize their conservative figure, which is about 6 times higher than this median figure (last time I checked, anyway).

As for what my fellow Americans say about Americans, it's all true. Probably we're understating the problem. After 9/11 I heard a well-educated older man say that we had never done anything like that to anyone else. Yep, absolutely right, we'd never killed 3000 people by flying planes into buildings. But I don't think he meant it that way.

QrazyQat: Huh, then. I'd expect that question to in fact lead to errors in the opposite direction, since it isn't clear that the number of deaths is supposed to be limited to the additional deaths due to the conflict.

Yes, they probably aimed high in their answers, which shows the problem is worse than even a cynic might think.

But on a whole range of issues, including this study but also ranging from global warming to health care to evolution, many Americans - a majority in some instances - take positions that seem ill-informed or flat-out irrational.

Americans are prone to swallowing PR presented as news or news analysis, and the American news media typically presents news as "balanced" by presenting "both sides" even when one side is factual and the other side is not. So they are very conflicted and confused about subjects for which there is overwhelming evidence supporting one side only -- because the news media presents it as if there were reasonable evidence for "both sides", hence "balance". And at times they even present the non-factual side as more likely than the factual side (as in most of the buildup to the Iraq war and much of its coverage.

They've, of course, asked this question in every other country in the world.

What are some of the highlights of those surveys?

Posted by: Donald Johnson : "I'm usually arguing against JoshD, but it's unfair to use this story to attack IBC, when IBC has done its best to publicize their conservative figure, which is about 6 times higher than this median figure (last time I checked, anyway)."

IBC's criticism of the Lancet survey number was *extremely* dishonest. The survey article explains why the IBC's number would be a massive undercount, with references. Anybody in the IBC who wasn't a fool knew this - their publicly stated criteria guarantees a massive undercount.

By denouncing the Lancet survey number, they played right into the 'even the liberal ______ thinks that the number is too high' trap. I haven't heard that the IBC has recanted, which leads me to believe that they deliberately trashed a rival, though it served evil.

"American news media typically presents news as "balanced" by presenting "both sides" even when one side is factual and the other side is not."

With most American news organizations,"balance" is not so much a genuine effort to maintain impartiality as it is an effort to look as if they are maintaining impartiality.

This is as true with NPR under Kevin Klose (former head of "Voice of America", which is hardly impartial) as it is with FOX.

It's a classic case of framing bias skewing the results.

While I can't defend the average American's shocking ignorance about the rest of the world, I think the designers of the question have stuffed up. Most respondents chose towards the lower end of the middle. If the lowest estimate was 30,000 and the highest 800,000 (Bush v Lancet) the same pattern of response would probably give a more realistic median of 100,000-200,000.

"It's a classic case of framing bias skewing the results.
Most respondents chose towards the lower end of the middle."

Framing of the question in this case is irrelevant to the conclusion that Americans are ignorant about the number of civilians killed in Iraq.

People typically select the middle answer when they have no idea what the answer actually is, so I can't see how that gets the respondents off the hook in this case.

Either way, Americans come out looking ignorant.

"IBC's criticism of the Lancet survey number was extremely dishonest. The survey article explains why the IBC's number would be a massive undercount, with references. Anybody in the IBC who wasn't a fool knew this"

There is absolutely nothing "dishonest" (let alone 'extremely') about the IBC criticism here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php

You seem to base this "dishonesty" claim on the idea that "survey article explains why the IBC's number would be a massive undercount".

Actually, the survey article asserts things which are entirely fanciful and then gives references which either lead to nothing or reveal that the source is being misinterpreted or misrepresented. The only thing actually there that has anything to do with media coverage is one study from Guatemala that says 13 Guatemalan newspapers reported only a small percentage of rural conflict deaths in a few years during the early 1980s. From this, sweeping and groundless claims are made.

So what IBC "knew" was that the "explanation" was a bunch of bunk passed off by the appearance (and repeated assertion) of "expertise" and "peer review" and by an illusion of scholarly citations that few (except IBC) would read. So IBC put that nonsense aside. If you had actually followed the "references" to try to track down the supporting evidence supposedly contained within them you would have known this too. And maybe you'd be accusing the right party of "extreme dishonesty".

What I want to know, Josh, is what you think about the general claim (made by many) that "IBC's number is an undercount".

Do you believe IBC's number is an undercount of the total number of civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq?

Note that I am not asking whether IBC's number is an undercount of "the number of civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq".

I am asking whether IBC's number is an undercount of the total number (reported plus any non-reported) of civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq?

In other words, do you believe that all the deaths were reported?

This is a simple question that demands a simple "yes" or "no" answer.

"No, I do not believe IBC's number is an undercount."

OR
"Yes, I believe IBC's number is an undercount."

If yes, any guess at the magnitude of the IBC undercount?

Seriously, keep on bashing Americans and the state of knowledge of the average American.

Go for it.

It would be nice if someone pointed to any actual research, on this question, indicating it is in any way unique.

Lettuce wrote:

"They've, of course, asked this question in every other country in the world."

That's news to me. Lots of Aussies here - any heard of it being asked in your country?

My suspicion is it's an unusual, but useful, line of questioning.

I'm curious about my fellow Americans who can't find Iraq on a map, but do know the number of Americans who died there. Some information pervades accurately to people who never seek it out and must just hear it from friends, and other information doesn't.

Well so Americans are ignorant of the true casualty count - I can believe that. Americans are relatively ignorant of international affairs compared with residents in smaller, less powerful nations - I can believe that too. But several of the posts here seme to be extrapolating from that that Americans are more ignorant generally than other people. Strikes me as unlikely.

There are staggering levels of ignorance in other nations, it's just that 1) they're ignorant of other things (i.e. they're slightly more internationally acute, for obvious reasons), 2) you don't hear about it so much because nobody much cares what they think. (and no, I'm not a US national!).

"Americans are relatively ignorant of international affairs"

including international affairs for which their government is more responsible than any other.

No answer yet from Josh on whether he believes IBC's number is an undercount of the total number of civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq. (asked in my above post)

Since my post (ie, question to Josh) came immediately following Josh D's own post above, I seriously doubt he missed it.

One can not rule out that Josh might be choosing to ignore the question, of course.

##"But given the rotten state of American news coverage, should we expect them to know better?" Posted by: QrazyQat | February 24, 2007 01:12 PM

#There are a lot of problems with US news media, however they can hardly be held responsible for this.

Keep in mind that the media are not there to report on the news. They are there to sell you toothpaste. They generate their revenue by advertising, and in order to get that ad revenue, you have to watch them. Sensationalizing issues gets people to watch. Facts have little to do with their practices.

Sensationalizing issues gets people to watch. Facts have little to do with their practices

I would have to say that this is accurate and IMO does mean they are partly responsible. The people who are getting their news from this inaccurate media (and other countries do better) should, in theory, dig up better sources on their own, but how much time should we expect them to use doing so? Why should we not be able to expect accurate news from the news media?

"There are staggering levels of ignorance in other nations"

Of course there is, but that isn't the issue. The US went to war under false pretenses. The public was blatantly lied to and they sopped it up because they didn't know any better. The war continues because the public in the US still doesn't know any better and most don't want to know. Politicians in the US are not willing to step up to the plate because in order to get elected they have to pander to a constituency that knows little about the world outside their borders.

Yes, other countries have staggering levels of ignorance, but the last time I looked they were not involved in promulgating wars on several fronts and sowing distrust even among its allies. Ultimately, the blame for this unrest doesn't lie with US politicians but with the US electorate, the very same people who show such a staggering level of understanding about the world around them.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/02/americans_ignorant_of_iraqi_de…

Idiot-moi. How about the right link?

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLits…

"Why should we not be able to expect accurate news from the news media?"

Because, at least in America, the media is big business run by people like Ruppert Murdoch.

The mainstream American media is a whore for those who own it.

Well, given the power of the US, it would be nice if the people of the US were wiser and better educated than the rest of us. But unfortunately they are, on the whole, just as dumb - a tragedy, but not a reason for schadenfreude.

wrt international knowledge, the relatively lower lack of awarenees in the US is not an accident - it's a *consequence* of the power of the US. If you live in the US, most of the time you do not need to worry about what foreign politicians are saying, since it's unlikely to have any consequence for you. Of course, that can bite you in the backside when your politicians lead you into something like Iraq...

wrt to the topic on this thread, it's not surprising that they know more about their own casualties than the Iraqi's. It happens everywhere. There was once a skit on TWTWTW (I think) that went something like: "A plane has crashed in the Atlantic. The dead included, in order of importance, 1 Briton, 3 Americans, 17 Europeans, and around 250 others..."

Also, of course, they do not want to hear the bad news. But that's another cross-cultural phenomenon.

"If you live in the US, most of the time you do not need to worry about what foreign politicians are saying, since it's unlikely to have any consequence for you."

That's only part of the story. Many Americans firmly believe that it is no accident that they have the power and resources they do -- that they are "God's chosen people". Because of this, many believe that they can do no wrong.

Our President is just one of literally tens of millions of Americans who believe this.