Natalie Solent

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Saturday, March 19, 2005
 
More about that Lancet study. [This post has had material gradually added to it as I thought of new things to say.]

Via this post by Squander Two I found this post by John B of Shot by Both Sides, which is followed by extensive debate in the comments.

Here's my reason for thinking the Lancet Study [out of date link now updated] over-counted. (For convenience I will talk about the oft-quoted headline figure of 100,000 excess deaths, though of course the study itself had a very wide range of possible figures.) Why the devil should a war in which the side making the running, in this case the Americans, had every motive to minimise civilian casualties, kill at a higher rate than wars where the dominant side either did not give a fig for civilian well-being or actively sought to kill civilians? A killing rate in Iraq comparable to Darfur (this article discusses the difficulties of counting deaths in that conflict), or to the Dutch Hongerwinter of 1944? It doesn't seem likely. Furthermore I am not often one to enthuse about the ability of a command economy to keep people fed and sheltered, but it seems crazy to me to suppose that the vast sums of effort and money the Americans put into rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure had so little effect.

And here's my take on what actually happened to make the study show figures as high as it did: (1) I think some of the interviewees falsely claimed to have lost relatives as a result of the war in the hope of getting compensation. (2) I think some of the interviewees exaggerated their indirect losses in order to feel important, to gain the psychological payoff of being hard done by, to restore their pride, and to pay out the Americans for defeating them in war. (This bundle of motives could be shared by those who felt that the American invasion was a good thing, as well as those who thought it was a bad thing.)

To you who are gearing up to call me overly harsh, or even racist, in these assumptions about the Iraqi interviewees, stow it. I describe human behaviour, not exclusively Iraqi behaviour. Times are hard in Iraq. All can agree on that. The atmosphere in any country at war, or just after a war, has something of Harry Lime's Vienna about it. Deals and scams abound, as people who in happier times could have let the current of orthodox renumerative activity carry them along learn new stratagems to snatch or scavenge scarce resources. (Angling for compensation and exaggeration for political purposes aren't exactly unknown in the rich, safe West either, and with far less excuse.) Iraqis have heard of, and perhaps observed, this strange Western habit of giving money to victims of war. One does not have to assume the slightest impropriety on the part of the study designers or interviewers to find it plausible that a certain proportion of respondents will say, "Ah yes, my sister's poor babe was stillborn. No, we did not report it. What would have been the point in all that chaos? We dared not leave the house at that time. We buried her in the garden." Some will say that because it is true. That should always be remembered. But some will also say it because, who knows, it might pay off ¹ - and what are these researchers going to do to check, start digging the lawn?

Moving on from the discussion of what the facts are to the discussion of who has moral authority to speculate about them ... what you have to remember is that John B likes to tease. That's why his blog has the address it has. ("http://www.stalinism.com"; to me "http://www.hitlerism.com" would be only slightly more offensive.) His blog is miles better, and his attitudes miles more humane, than the URL suggests, but he is out to rattle a few cages. That's why he said,

"If you don't accept that the 100,000 number from the Lancet study on Iraq war causalties represents a probable lower bound (given its exclusion of Falluja, where we appear to have killed everyone) on the number of Iraqis who died in the 18 months following the war and otherwise wouldn't have died in the 18 months following the war, and you do not have a PhD in a statistical discipline, then you are an ignorant bigot."
At first I thought this sarcasm, particularly given the bit about Fallujah, but apparently he means it, though, as I said, I am sure he also intends to provoke. OK, I'll bite. Science, particularly social science and medicine is full of the most elegant and mathematically self-consistent results subverted by human hope, fear, malice, cupidity, humour ² or general slipperiness. William Broad and Nicholas Wade's book "Betrayers of the Truth" lists some of them. It is mis-titled, being as illuminating about self-deception and gullibility as about outright fraud and deceit.

And another thing. We know the authors of the study are a long way from the ideal of scientific impartiality because of the way they rushed it out to appear before the US election. Bad form, old boy. We also know they, or at least one of them, Roberts, is deceiving us or (more likely) deceiving himself because he made the absurd claim that the rush job wasn't intended to influence the result of the election one way or another. Does anyone believe that?

ADDED LATER: Here's my earlier post on the study from back when it came out.

¹ ADDED LATER STILL: When I made up that little scenario I was thinking of this passage from the summary:

"When violent deaths were attributed to a faction in the conflict or to criminal forces, no further investigation into the death was made to respect the privacy of the family and for the safety of the interviewers. The deceased had to be living in the household at the time of death and for more than 2 months before to be considered a household death.

Within clusters, an attempt was made to confirm at least two reported non-infant deaths by asking to see the death certificate. Interviewers were initially reluctant to ask to see death certificates because this might have implied they did not believe the respondents, perhaps triggering violence. Thus, a compromise was reached for which interviewers would attempt to confirm at least two deaths per cluster. Confirmation was sought to ensure that a large fraction of the reported deaths were not fabrications. Death certificates usually did not exist for infant deaths and asking for such certificates would probably inflate the fraction of respondents who could not confirm reported deaths. The death certificates were requested at the end of the interview so that respondents did not know that confirmation would be sought as they reported deaths."



² Anyone know if it's true or myth that an anthropologist - Margaret Mead? - once claimed that some South Seas islanders did not know that sex led to babies, citing as evidence the fact that certain islanders had solemnly told her that her theory of conception must be wrong - for had not that woman there given birth last month even though her husband had been away on a sea voyage for two years?