{"id":10594,"date":"2008-01-07T06:49:20","date_gmt":"2008-01-07T12:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=10594"},"modified":"2008-01-07T06:49:20","modified_gmt":"2008-01-07T12:49:20","slug":"should-be-final-nail-in-lancet-survey-coffin-dan-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=10594","title":{"rendered":"Should-Be Final Nail in Lancet Survey Coffin [Dan Collins]"},"content":{"rendered":"

published by National Journal<\/a>.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Another grim milestone.<\/p>\n

How to explain the enormous discrepancy between The Lancet<\/em>‘s estimation of Iraqi war deaths and those from studies that used other methodologies? For starters, the authors of the Lancet<\/em> study followed a model that ensured that even minor components of the data, when extrapolated over the whole population, would yield huge differences in the death toll. Skeptical commentators have highlighted questionable assumptions, implausible data, and ideological leanings among the authors, Gilbert Burnham<\/strong>, Riyadh Lafta<\/strong>, and Les Roberts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Some critics go so far as to suggest that the field research on which the study is based may have been performed improperly — or not at all. The key person involved in collecting the data — Lafta, the researcher who assembled the survey teams, deployed them throughout Iraq, and assembled the results — has refused to answer questions about his methods.<\/p>\n

Some of these questions could be resolved if other researchers had access to the surveyors’ original field reports and response forms. The authors have released files of collated survey results but not the original survey reports, citing security concerns and the fact that some information was not recorded or preserved in the first place. This was a legitimate problem, and it underscored the difficulty of conducting research in a war zone.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/td>\nE<\/strong><\/font>ach death recorded by the Hopkins surveyors in 2006 extrapolated to 2,000 deaths in the Iraqi population. <\/font><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Over the past several months, National Journal<\/em> has examined the 2006 Lancet<\/em> article, and another<\/a> [PDF] that some of the same authors published in 2004; probed the problems of estimating wartime mortality rates; and interviewed the authors and their critics. NJ<\/em> has identified potential problems with the research that fall under three broad headings: 1) possible flaws in the design and execution of the study; 2) a lack of transparency in the data, which has raised suspicions of fraud; and 3) political preferences held by the authors and the funders, which include George Soros<\/strong>‘s Open Society Institute<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can begin once again dating pundits’, pols’, journalists’ citations of that data from this date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

published by National Journal.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Another grim milestone. How to explain the enormous discrepancy between The Lancet‘s estimation of Iraqi war deaths and those from studies that used other methodologies? For starters, the authors of the Lancet study followed a model that ensured that even minor components of the data, when extrapolated over the whole population, would yield huge differences in the death toll. Skeptical commentators have highlighted questionable assumptions, implausible<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}