My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

"If They Liked It Once, They'll Love It Twice," or "A Logical Lapse"

        Welcome, fellow Instapundit readers.  Look around, kick the tires, leave comments, and generally make yourselves at home.  And remember to threaten everyone you know with cooties if they don't read me daily.

        Additional Update:Jane Galt points to some of the statistical problems with the study, Ckayton Cramer summarizes how absurd the whole thing is.

        You've probably heard of the Johns Hopkins/Lancet "study" Election Tampering: The Sequel (PDF warning), in which the people who brought us the 2004 lies about 100,000 Iraqis dying now attempt to convince us that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq War, plus or minus 274,828½, eight to eighteen times what other researchers have found using "direct methods," such as body counts and official figures.

        The coup de grâce to this pitiful attempt to get a Democratic Congress is given by David W. Pittelli, of Adams Massachusetts, a commenter at Medipundit, who took the nonsense seriously so that we wouldn't have to.

        According to the phony survey, they recorded 629 deaths since the start of the war (p4 of the PDF).  In 545 cases, they bothered to ask for death certificates, and for those 545 requests, 501 times they were shown the death certificates.  So Mr. Pittelli notes, at least 80% of all the deaths in the sample (501/629), and possibly as many as 92% (501/545) were recorded by the government.  Let's repeat that: According to the anti-war propagandists who are responsible for this blatant dishonesty, 80 to 92% of all deaths in their sample were recorded in the Iraqi government's own official figures.

        What this means, as Pittelli points out, is that the official death figures should record at least 80% of the deaths since the Iraq war.  Taking the bogus figures at face value, simply for the sake of argument entertainment, I calculate the estimates based on official figures should be between 314,000 and 867,000.  They aren't.  The "official figures estimate" is about 49,000.

        To take the Johns Hopkins/Lancet figures seriously, you have to believe that the Iraqi government recorded deaths occurring since the invasion with an accuracy of at least 80%, but then suppressed 85-94% of those recorded deaths when releasing official figures, with no one blowing the whistle on them.  You also have to believe that 85-94% of the dead bodies were unnoticed by the MSM, the funeral homes, and everyone else trying to keep track of the war casualties..

        Alternatively, you have to believe that the Iraqi govt. only issues death certificates for 6-15% of all deaths, but this random sample got 80% certificate hits by pure chance.

        Can you say bogus?

        A hat tip to Glenn, for pointing out the Medipundit discussion, and big, big kudos, to Mr. Pittelli, for spotting this fraud.

        As a side note, the MSM falls down again.  The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Treason all had stories on this intellectual atrocity, but not a single one bothered to link to the study.  Thank you, Sydney Smith the Medipundit, for doing providing us with the URL of original source.

Posted by: saintonge at 21:09 | link | comments (4)
iraq, msm, treason, elections, dishonesty, illogic, war with jihadism

Comments:

#1  12 October 2006 - 21:51

 

Good point.

Keep in mind too that the violence is largely in three provinces, which makes the number even more absurd.

Anonymous

#2  13 October 2006 - 00:30

 

You're wrong.

see here:



When someone dies, you get a death certificate from the hospital, morgue or coroner, in your hand. This bit of the death infrastructure is still working in Iraq. Then the person who issued the death certificate is meant to send a copy to the central government records office where they collate them, tabulate them and collect the overall mortality statistics. This bit of the death infrastructure is not still working in Iraq. (It was never great before the war, broke down entirely during the year after the invasion when there was no government to send them to and has never really recovered; statistics agencies are often bottom of the queue after essential infrastructure, law and order and electricity). Therefore, there is no inconsistency between the fact that 92% of people with a dead relative could produce the certificate when asked, and the fact that Iraq has no remotely reliable mortality statistics and quite likely undercounts the rate of violent death by a factor of ten.

Anonymous

#3  13 October 2006 - 00:44

 

If the system is broken in communicating the death stats from the outlying hospital to the central records center, then why not first do a survey of the hospitals?

It seems to me it would be a more accurate system, as well as safer for the people conducting the survey. Hospitals are well protected in the more violent areas. And all they'd be doing is looking through records, not asking people questions.

It sounds to this unqualified observer that accurate information is there for the asking, someone just needs to actually go to the hospitals.

Anonymous

#4  16 October 2006 - 17:01

 

"When someone dies, you get a death certificate from the hospital, morgue or coroner, in your hand. This bit of the death infrastructure is still working in Iraq."

But then wouldn't there still be records from each hospital, morgue and coroner that issues the certificates- easily countable records?
If for some reason the places that issued the certificates routinely destroy all evidence of those issued certificates and the deaths then how did the pollsters verify the authenticity the certificates?

Anonymous

Comments: