Iraq, Body Counts and the BBC's Mathematical Ignorance

Everyone should read this paper. It's in very plain english and appears purposefully put out in time for the US election, as was the last one in 2004.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/01/1514200&mode=thread&tid=25

It confirms the results of that report, and ends with:

At the conclusion of our 2004 study we urged that an independent body assess the excess mortality that we saw in Iraq. This has not happened. We continue to believe that an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian standards in conflict is urgently needed.

Our leaders literally do not care how many people die as a result of their policies. One hopes that the public does.

And another thing: that plonker in the People's Democratic Replic of Korea giving them something else to talk about. Thanks a bunch.

I suggest that instead of using phrases like 'Iraq body count estimate of 420,000+' one should only use the numbers given in the abstract of the paper, which are [rounded to 3 sig. figs.]:

Mortality rate up from 5.5/1000/yr pre- to 13.3 post-invasion.

Excess deaths to July 2006 = 655,000 = 2.5 % of the population [i.e. 26.2 mn.]

Of post-invasion deaths, 601,000 were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire.

The lead author is: Prof Gilbert Burnham. School of Public Health, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.

Method: national cross-sectional cluster sample survey.

It surprises me that there have been so far only 50,000 excess deaths from all other causes. The paper points out that these indirect causes often account for most civilian deaths. We need to keep in mind that matters may get much worse than they are now; if they do and the water, sewerage and electricity services break down, it will not take long for disease, starvation and thirst to catch up with violence as causes of death.

We need to keep in mind that matters may get much worse than they are now; if they do and the water, sewerage and electricity services break down, it will not take long for disease, starvation and thirst to catch up with violence as causes of death.

The water, sewerage and electricity services already have broken down: they were a target during the initial 'shock and awe' operation and have been bombed to smithereens. This was done to burden the population with time consuming chores to prevent them organising against the occupation and also to make them dependent on the US for basic services.

The BEEB have developed a little backbone this evening and given the story some reasonable coverage on NewsNight.
They started off with a sequence of escalating estimates for the no of Iraqis George and Tony have killed so far from Rupsfeld's "We don't do body counts" through to this estimate.
This presentation was very much that this was an independent and probably reliable number, they allowed time for the researcher from John Hopkins to answer the questions and propaganda put to him.

You can take that back. The facts have already fallen off the news-cycle, and went completely unmentioned on the Today Program this morning. I can find no trace of it on the web pages of all the major US newspapers. It seems too non-credible to report.

What we're now left with is the secondary mentions; when a commentator refers to it as evidence for how badly things have gone, the news-media will be able to treat that person as biased and nuts for referring to patently non-credible sources.

Once again, the media fails to do its job of sorting out provable facts that no one wants to know from cheap bullshit.

There's something about this that never gets mentioned. Ever since Salam Pax talked about the subject just after the invasion, everybody has been concentrating on civilian deaths; but nobody seems particularly bothered about the numbers of Iraqi servicemen killed during the invasion. What was their crime? Defending their country?

Here's what The Lancet (free registration required) have to say about the apparent discrepancy between their estimates and other body counts:

Our estimate of excess deaths is far higher than those reported in Iraq through passive surveillance measures. This discrepancy is not unexpected. Data from passive surveillance are rarely complete, even in stable circumstances, and are even less complete during conflict, when access is restricted and fatal events could be intentionally hidden. Aside from Bosnia, we can find no conflict situation where passive surveillance recorded more than 20% of the deaths measured by population-based methods. In several outbreaks, disease and death recorded by facility-based methods underestimated events by a factor of ten or more when compared with population-based estimates. Between 1960 and 1990, newspaper accounts of political deaths in Guatemala correctly reported over 50% of deaths in years of low violence but less than 5% in years of highest violence. Nevertheless, surveillance tallies are important in monitoring trends over time and in the provision of individual data, and these data track closely with our own findings

Garry, at A Big Stick and A Small Carrot, points out that The Lancet’s figures and research methods are peer-reviewed and suggests, not unreasonably,

here’s what I’d like to see journalists tackling this story do. When giving airtime to obviously politically interested parties who question this report, I’d like them to ask these partisans whether their criticisms have the backing of four independent experts. That wouldn’t be so difficult.

http://notsaussure.wordpress.com/

Thank you for keeping the heat on BBC to be more than an uncritical government mouthpiece!

We have a similar problem with NPR here in the US; they get their very substantial $$$ from the government and business and they reciprocate by alternating between trivia and paroting the press releases of their government and industry patrons.

Re BBC and NPR's sham reporting of the Lancet article, one of the BBC folks disputed my claim that BBC owed its listeners comments not just from any Ph.D.s but Ph.D.s whose training and work was in relevant disciplines like epidemiology and biostatistics.

Interesting difference between your simi-official news agency, the BBC, and ours. The BBC guy actually engaged in an exchange of emails with me, despite my status as a mere colonial. In contrast, I've never gotten anything but form letters from our own US semiofficial news agency.

Thanks for your excellent and neccesary work,
Tom