Iraq
tlambert | February 26, 2009This post contains some more notes on a reply to the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper.
In my previous post I showed that the MSB papers was wrong to claim that it was plausible that the unsampled regions was 10 times as large as the sampled region. In this post I look at their model. Their model is wrong because it assumes that there is no main street bias in the sampled region and because of this they massively overestimate any bias in the Lancet sampling.
Let's start with a correct model of the situation. I've adopted their terminology where possible.
We have a population of size N…
tlambert | February 23, 2009The Johns Hopkins press release states:
Data Collection
An examination was conducted of all the original data collection forms, numbering over 1,800 forms, which included review by a translator. The original forms have the appearance of authenticity in variation of handwriting, language and manner of completion. The information contained on the forms was validated against the two numerical databases used in the study analyses. These numerical databases have been available to outside researchers and provided to them upon request since April 2007.
Some minor, ordinary errors in transcription…
tlambert | February 6, 2009Unfortunately, the Journal of Peace Research has published the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper. My earlier criticisms still apply, so I'm reposting them. Consider this the first draft of a reply to their paper.
The authors argue that main street bias could reasonably produce a factor of 3 difference.
How did they get such a big number? Well, they made a simple model in which the bias depends on four numbers:
q, how much more deadly the areas near main street that were sampled are than the other areas that allegedly were not sampled. They speculate that this number might be 5 (ie…
tlambert | February 4, 2009I asked Mary Losch (chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee) to comment on my previous post
I have read your entry and would note that the links you provided did
not supply the questionnaire items but rather a simple template (as
noted in the heading). The Johns Hopkins report provides only
superficial information about methods and significantly more detail
would be needed to determine the scientific integrity of those methods
-- hence our formal request to Dr. Burnham. The Hopkins website
refers to data release but, in fact, no data were provided in response
to our formal requests.…
tlambert | February 4, 2009The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has put out a press release alleging that Gilbert Burnham (who is not a member of the AAPOR) violated the AAPOR's code of ethics. What did he do? Their press release states:
Mary E. Losch, chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee, noted that AAPOR's investigation of Burnham began in March 2008, after receiving a complaint from a member. According to Losch, "AAPOR formally requested on more than one occasion from Dr. Burnham some basic information about his survey including, for example, the wording of the questions he used,…
grrlscientist | January 12, 2009tags: Iraq, Iraq for Sale, politics, streaming video
Robert Greenwald, the director of IRAQ FOR SALE, was invited to testify before Congress by Rep. Jim Moran. He prepared four minutes from the documentary to show.
Republicans insisted this video not be shown. [4:37]
revere | November 11, 2008
The Reveres, November 11, 2008, year five of the War in Iraq and year seven of the War in Afghanistan
revere | November 10, 2008One resource the incoming Obama administration is certainly to find no shortage of is advice. We don't know whom they will listen to, although we know much of it -- maybe most of it -- is likely to be of the self-serving variety. How to separate the wheat from the chaff will be a delicate task. Powerful people who give lousy advice still get bent out of shape when it isn't followed. So we'll have to see. Meanwhile we will be scanning whatever advice is made public. An example is a report from the Defense Science Board, issued on Election Day, no less. It purports to give the next…
revere | October 29, 2008There is a lot of misery in this world, too much of it the result of what we humans do to each other. And it's getting worse. A typical example, is a country where 28% of the children are malnourished, up from 19% five years ago; where in 2006 11% of the newborns were underweight, up from 4% three years before; where 15% of the population doesn't have and can't afford enough food and is dependent food assistance programs for survival; where 70% don't have adequate water and 80% don't have adequate sanitation so that in the poorest urban neighborhoods people drink a water and sewage mixture;…
mikethemadbiologist | August 3, 2008Glenn Greenwald's recent post about the botched anthrax investigation reminds me of a colleague who was investigated by the FBI after the anthrax attacks (and check out the letter claiming that Bruce Ivins was yet another scientist wrongfully accused).
When I heard that he was under investigation, I was shocked: he is one of the nicer scientists I know. Ultimately, he was cleared, and in a bizarre reversal, the government asked him for help in typing the anthrax strain.
The reason I bring this up is not to demonstrate that the FBI couldn't investigate its way out of a paper bag, but to note…
mikethemadbiologist | July 20, 2008...and you'll be surprised who said that. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:
"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months [for withdrawal from Iraq]. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."...
"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."...
"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 18, 2008The Washington Mandarins are clutching their pearls over this dastardly Democratic ad:
Seriously, some of us were against this war, in part, because we didn't want people we know (and, in some cases, knew) to die. We are not John McCain's (or Michael O'Hanlon's) serfs: he has to justify a long-term occupation and he hasn't done so to million of his fellow and equal citizens.
Meanwhile, insinuating that the Democratic nominee isn't entirely American, that's still ok. No fainting there.
Our chattering class is a bunch of flaming shitbags.
mikethemadbiologist | June 10, 2008The NY Times has an article recapping how Obama defeated Clinton in the Democratic primary. The article is a prime example of the myopia that afflicts our political press. And it's not what's in the article, but what's missing.
Iraq.
In a story of over 4,000 words purporting to describe the campaign, the word Iraq does not appear once. For a fair number of Democrats, the Iraq War featured prominently in their decision to support Obama. More accurately, Clinton's support for the Iraq War* gave Obama an opening. It might not have been a deal breaker, but it certainly encouraged Democratic…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2008The revisionist pro-Iraq war argument that 'the idea was sound, but the implementation was problematic' has always bothered me. It assumes that a 'war of choice'--that is, an unprovoked assault against another nation which does not pose an immediate threat--will work out just fine. So when it doesn't work out--and it almost never does--it's not the fault of war supporters, it's someone else's. Never mind that wars of choice almost always end in massive blowback, there's just no conceivable way anyone could have foreseen the outcome....
Glenn Greenwald, responding to Dan Drezner and Megan…
mikethemadbiologist | March 16, 2008Let me count the ways. Actually, Greg Mitchell has done that for us. Here's a couple for you:
11) In one of the purest "my bads" of the war, Fox News' John Gibson ripped Neil Young after the rocker released his protest album Living With War. Gibson demanded that Young go see the new United 93 movie and even offered to buy his ticket. Young, it was soon pointed out, had actually written one of the first 9/11 songs--"Let's Roll," about, you guessed it, Flight 93....
15) In April 2007, CBS' Bob Simon admitted to Bill Moyers that his network should have dug deeper into the false claims on WMD…
revere | March 10, 2008I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you occupy a country you also assume responsibility for its public health. That's both international law and it's the right thing to do. In Iraq we haven't done that. So while I am about to say it once more, after I've said it I have something else to say, too, something that underscores my point in triplicate.
But first the main point:.
It is the kind of news that everybody had been dreading. An outbreak of cholera in Iraq, which started in two Northern provinces, has already reached Baghdad and has become Iraq's biggest cholera outbreak in…
grrlscientist | February 19, 2008tags: satire, parody, humor, Iraq, suicide vests, streaming video
Panelists discuss whether stringent new suicide vest laws would ensure that only responsible people blow themselves up. "It's not fair to treat people like criminals if they use a suicide vest in a responsible and proper manner" [2:24]
revere | February 8, 2008The President's budget was announced on Monday (see our post here), and as many people know (including us), it is Dead on Arrival. But it is still a significant for its symbolism. This is what the Bush administration wants. They know they won't get it but they are making a statement. Some statement:
revere | February 4, 2008Most Americans think the Afghanistan mistake was the Right Thing to Do. While we are on record (here and here) as of another opinion, the conventional view is that getting rid of the Taliban was Good (they were Bad, which is true) and anyway it was payback for 9/11 (even though the Afghans didn't actually commit 9/11, only were the geographic location of the planner -- thanks to US aid when bin Laden was fighting the Soviets. Now Pakistan is where the 9/11 leaders live (not to mention that the actual perpetrators, who mostly came from Saudi). You fill in the rest. Still, few agree with us.…
tqa | January 30, 2008
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver, and her spleen. She ended her year as an outpatient at Walter Reed, waiting for her superiors to decide whether or not she would have to stand court-martial for inflicting that wound upon herself. In between, she had to recover from her physical wounds, learn to deal with the inner demons that led to them, she had to deal with superior officers who believed that she would be more…