[lit-ideas] Lancet analysis
- From: Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 01:54:40 EST
Hi,
Yes, I found it. There were three more pieces on the Media Lens site in
September 2005. (not so long ago!)
Media Lens has a great analysis of the Lancet report...esp in light of
journalistic integrity. As we all surely noted, the Lancet article was
dismissed
as not having had a large enough sample even though the science behind it was
quite sound and was used in other studies of other similar situations. (and
all of that was with them not even touching the deaths from Fallujah--which
I found interesting as we know there were numerous civilians left there to
die...before being cut off from the news world, the little that I was able to
catch had to do with lots of babies/parents/teenage boys [not allowed to
leave] who died of either thirst or wounds...])
There are three parts. Here is Part 1:
_http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050905_burying_the_lancet_part1.php_
(http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050905_burying_the_lancet_part1.php)
Here is Part 2:
_http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_part2.php_
(http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_part2.php)
From the beginning (in Part I), there is both an analysis of the methodology
used as well as examples of the media's reaction to it. Most interesting is
that the same people did a similar study on the Congo and so Media Lens
discusses [esp in part 2] the reactions to that study [all positive and no
question on the methodology used there which was the same as in Iraq]. As they
began, they look at some of the reaction from senior editors from (esp) the UK
Independent and then the responses from the editors of the Lancet article.
Here
is the response (there is more, of course, but this is pretty interesting):
We contacted Les Roberts, a world renowned epidemiologist and lead author of
the report. Roberts responded on August 22 with an email which he asked us to
forward to the Independent:
âDear Mr. Kirby and Ms. Dejevsky,
âI was disappointed to hear that you felt our study was in some way dismissed
by Jack Strawâs anemic response to our report in the Lancet last November.
Serious reviews of our work and the criticisms of it were run in the Financial
Times, the Economist, the Chronicle of Higher Education (attached above) and
the WSJ [Wall Street Journal] Online on August 5th. Closer to home, John
Rentoul of the Independent solicited a response to the Jack Straw letter last
Nov. 21st and we responded with the attached letter [Not provided here]. I am
told that it was printed by your paper.
âMany people, like Ms. Dejevsky, have used the word extrapolation to describe
what we did. When I hear people use that word they mean what is described in
my Websterâs Unabridged: â1. Statistics. to estimate the value of a
variable outside its tabulated or observed range.â By this definition and
the one I
hear used by everyone on this side of the Atlantic, we did not extrapolate.
We did sample. We drew conclusions from within the confines of that universe
from which we sampled. Aside from a few homeless and transient households that
did not appear in the 2002 Ministry of Health figures or households who had
been dissolved or killed since, every existing household in Iraq had an equal
chance that we would visit them through our randomization process.
âI understand that you feel that the sample was small: this is most puzzling.
142 post-invasion deaths in 988 households is a lot of deaths, and for the
setting, a lot of interviews. There is no statistical doubt mortality is up,
no doubt that violence is the main cause, and no doubt that the coalition
forces have caused far more of these violent deaths than the insurgents
(p<.0000001).
"In essence this is an outbreak investigation. If your readers hear about a
sample with 10 cases of mad cow disease in 1000 British citizens randomly
tested, I am sure they would have no doubt there was an outbreak. In 1993, when
the US Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee
and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the
largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613
households was not a big enough sample. It is odd that the logic of
epidemiology
embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow
changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces.
âThe comments of Ms. Dejevsky regarding representativeness â(it seemed
small
from a lay perspective (i remember at the time) for the conclusions being
drawn and there seemed too little account taken of the different levels of
unrest in different regions. my main point, though, was less based on my
impression than on the fact that this technique exposed the authors to the
criticisms/dismissal that the govt duly made, and they had little to counter
those
criticisms with, bar the defence that their methods were standard for those
sort
of surveys.)â are also cause for concern because she seems to have not
understood that this was a random sample.
âBy picking random neighborhoods proportional to population, we are likely to
account for the natural variability of ethnicity, income, and violence. Her
words above strongly suggest that the Falluja numbers should be included,
rather than being used to temper the results from the other 32 neighborhoods.
Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey
estimating that ~285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of
invasion and
occupation and we reported it as at least ~100,000.
âFinally, there are now at least 8 independent estimates of the number or
rate of deaths induced by the invasion of Iraq. The source most favored by the
war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org) is the lowest. Our estimate is the third
from highest. Four of the estimates place the death toll above 100,000. The
studies measure different things. Some are surveys, some are based on
surveillance which is always incomplete in times of war. The three lowest
estimates
are surveillance based.
âThe key issues are supported by all the estimates that attribute deaths to
the various causes: violence is way up post-invasion and the Coalition is
responsible for many times more deaths than are the insurgents. The exact
number
is less important that these two indisputable facts which helps us to
understand why things are going badly and how to fix them.
I hope these thoughts are helpful.
Sincerely,
Les Robertsâ
Perhaps most damning in Robertsâ reply - in light of media criticism of the
Lancetâs alleged exaggeration of civilian deaths - was his refutation of the
claim that the uneven levels of violent unrest in Iraq compromised the
accuracy of the figures. In fact the study not only accounted for this
variability,
it erred on the side of caution by excluding data from Fallujah where deaths
were unusually high. Moreover, other violent hotspots - such as Ramadi,
Tallafar and Najaf - were all passed over in the sample by random chance. This
suggests that the actual total of civilian deaths is likely to be higher than
100,000. Indeed, it would make far more sense for the media to be criticising
the report authors for under-estimating the number of deaths."
There is, of course, more in Part I and then in Part II.
It's all followed by an update article at
_http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_update.php_
(http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_update.php)
This update has even more information not only of their methodology to their
study but to another one...as well as an apology by the mathematician quoted
in one of the papers (he was, he says, criticizing the timing of the report,
etc., not the statistical analysis...)
That update is also interesting reading...
Best (again),
Marlena
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