"Lancet" study data secret?

Two of the more powerful, albeit dubious, public relations failures with respect to the Iraq War were the "Lancet" study estimates of civilian casualties.

"Lancet" was a misnomer, for the respected journal did not conduct the study but simply published it.

Now the American Association of Public Opinion Research has accused the study's director, Gilbert Burnham, accused Burnham of violating scientific ethics. The AAPOR requested specific information from Burnham so that it could verify his findings, but he declined:

"Dr Burnham provided only partial information and explicitly refused to provide complete information about the basic elements of his research," said Mary Losch, chair of the association's standards committee.

She added that Dr Burnham's refusal to co-operate "violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research."

The BBC also reported, for contrast, the civilian death estimates of Iraq Body Count. IBC published a criticism of Burnham's work on its Web site not long after the study was published in the Lancet.

I wonder if "Godless Liberal Homo" (aka "libhom") has yet taken note?

The criticisms of the Lancet studies you mention are specious. The pundits making them did not have the qualifications to judge them. On the other hand, scientists doing peer reviews for Britain's most prestigious medical journal were eminently qualified.

I wonder what the scientists doing peer reviews were permitted to review with respect to the study if Burnham refused to release data to the AAPOR?

Nothing yet at GLH.

Addendum:

It's old news so wouldn't really count as an "update," but I found this nugget in an older story about the "Lancet" study:

Professor Burnham (...) says that the Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of “possible risks” to both interviewers and interviewees.

Ah, science and its principle of verification. Gotta love it.

Combating moonbat math at Iraq Body Count

The latest editorial column posted at Iraq Body Count exemplifies my objection to that project.

The author, Lily Hamourtziadou writes with her neural blinders on in service to her ideology.

After noting the bare facts regarding the recent agreement between Iraq and the United States to keep U.S. troops in Iraq through 2011, Hamourtziadou veers into the weeds of illogic:

Sadly, for every step forward achieved, a step is taken back with every innocent death, with every civilian that is shot, blown up, tortured. This week 133 civilians lost their lives in violence; 9 of them were children. US forces shot dead 3 men resisting arrest.

That’s many steps back.

This woman is incoherent. If every step forward results in many steps backward then logic dictates that no progress in Iraq is possible at all. The best we can hope for is no steps forward resulting in no steps backward. Obviously that is nonsense, and perhaps I should give Ms. Hamourtziadou the benefit of the doubt by crediting her with hyperbole.

The big problem with her analysis, of course, consists of the fact that insurgents--perhaps the three who resisted arrest among them--are causing most of the civilian deaths by far. Extremists carry bombs into downtown markets. Is that supposed to target the United States somehow? One could plausibly argue that the aim of insurgents is to wear down the U.S. and force its withdrawal, but that ignores the fact that peaceful conditions in Iraq would allow the U.S. to withdraw its troops much faster. Moqtada al Sadr made that realization, so why can't Hamourtziadou?

At the bottom line, the number of deaths is decreased by aggressive opposition of violent extremists. Iraq Coalition Casualty Count prominently posts the numbers that Iraq Casualty count omits. Civilian deaths are way, way down in Iraq, and a huge amount of credit goes to the work of coalition forces.

At least 3 more years of American occupation then. A lot more people will die during those 3 years. It is doubtful Iraq will ever recover from this war, now that terror has come to its streets, now that its society has been divided so deeply.

I imagine if people like Hamourtziadou had their way that U.S. forces would have withdrawn instead of instituting the surge strategy. Let's suppose that had happened. I know that many take it as an article of faith that the violence in Iraq was caused entirely by the presence of foreigners, but let's be realistic. Sectarian violence is not the product of the U.S. intervention. Saddam Hussein repressed the Shiites and Kurds very brutally, and those groups have a sharp-edged axe to grind against their past oppressors. Add to that the hatred and distrust of the Iranians who are trying to influence the Iraqi government.

The truth is that the violence would very probably be worse if the U.S. had vacated Iraq. And perhaps people like Hamourtziadou would count every death on a ledger of Western blame. But that would just show that she is a moonbat.

The math works like this: Coalition troops risked their lives to decrease casualties stemming from sectarian violence and insurgent activity. The net result is a radical decrease in civilian casualties. The radical decrease in civilian casualties, combined with the strengthening of a central and plausibly non-sectarian central government charts a course toward a stable, unified and non-repressive Iraq.

And that's a giant leap forward.

Update on Iraq Body Count

In an earlier post I mused about the slow updating of some aspects of the Iraq Body Count project. With the help of Kay Williams, listed as IBC's "principal researcher and archivist," I confirmed that IBC still pursues its purposes full-bore but has fallen behind.

Williams explained:

This is purely because we are a very small team of volunteers and if one of the team is engaged in other work, or perhaps takes a holiday, this means someone else has to cover their work, to keep things at least ticking over, thus slowing everything down. We ensure that the initial work, the collecting and storing of media reports including civilian deaths, is always covered daily and have always thought it more important to do the work meticulously, rather than rushing it out, just to be current. We do aim to be only about two weeks at most behind (reports updating incidents, especially those involving many deaths, often come out at least a week later), but with only three people doing the core work, this has meant we have got considerably further behind than we would like. I am currently working on April 23rd. After the incidents are compiled, we send the information out to our checkers, all also volunteers and most with full-time jobs. This may entail discussion, correction/alteration of details, again causing delays, but vital to our work. I cannot publish incidents to the website until at least 2 checkers are agreed on the detail and have indeed had the time to do the checking.
(Kay Williams e-mail #1, 6/24/08)

One cannot help but appreciate the fastidious approach of the volunteer crew. The notion that IBC is flagging in its per capita effort is safely dispensed with, it seems.

Though I consider myself a journalist for purposes of blogging, I try to be extremely careful that those with whom I communicate are suitably aware that I intend to publish what they say. Williams offered a perfect model of civility and cooperation, and agreed to let me publish respecting the current state of IBC. She also encouraged me to in turn encourage my readers to take more complete advantage of IBC's resources and consider supporting their effort through donations.

IBC is trying to get proper funding for work which we consider should be done by all governments involved in conflict. We rely entirely on donations, to finance the website and pay a small amount to a couple of our workers - most of our team are unpaid volunteers, who have now been working on this project for nearly six years, 7 days a week. We are hoping for funding to improve our work, pay the core people something and enable more to be done using our data, for example we want to make the site more of a memorial to those innocent civilians killed, by having a memorial page for each person for whom we have personal details and stories. We have always considered our work to be much more than just numbers. Could you urge any interested readers to consider donating via the website, to keep us going for the present? Also, urge you(r) readers to read all sections of the sit(e), where we explain what we do, why and how etc.?
(Kay Williams e-mail #3, 6/24/08)

Any of my readers who have no concerns over the editorial content presented at IBC (I do have those types of reservations) is hereby encouraged to strongly consider donating to IBC to assist them in providing a valuable service.

The IBC Web site is set up very sensibly for easy navigation, in my opinion, but just in case:

Find out about their purpose here and more about their rationale here.

The statements of purpose and rationale should appeal effectively even to those who disagree with some of their editorial positions.

Those interested in helping in IBC's work can find out how by going here.

Bloggers who would like to use the information in this post to encourage support for IBC have my full permission to do so--just don't misrepresent my opinions.

***

I will repeat that I have personal reservations about contributing to IBC's work. The aspect of their rationale that asserts a premium importance on remembering the war dead transcends pro-Iraq War/anti-Iraq War opinion or editorializing, but in terms of material support I'm not sure the two are separable. I can, in good conscience, publicize what I agree are the worthiest portions of IBC's work and subject to reasonable criticism any editorial positions to which I object.

Iraq Body Count cutting and running? (Update x2: Staying the course but running behind)

I've wondered for a number of weeks what's going on with Iraq Body Count. Their graph of civilian deaths in Iraq has apparently not been updated since April 20. Maybe they update every four months? I guess that could be ... but there are other signs that activity at IBC has tailed off.

clipped from www.iraqbodycount.org

Above is an image from IBC of their civilian death counter embed. IBC invited visitors to use the embed to keep a running tally of deaths in Iraq. Just in case the clip I made actively updates, as of this posting it reads "85,141-92,871."


IBC's database page is likewise paused on April 20, which I take to mean that the counter isn't going anywhere since that time.

On the other hand, it's possible to find news accounts that include statements along these lines:

Iraq Body Count, a group that collates a tally of casualties from media reports, noted 752 civilian and police deaths in May, a grim figure but less than a third of the average last summer.
(Economist)

Additionally, I found news from early June (2008) reporting the IBC counter numbers as "84218 to 91889"--reflecting considerable activity this month if the figures were reported accurately and the IBC update was timely (as well as the June 2 news report containing it).

IBC gets full credit for attempting to do their work accurately and for its very reasonable criticisms of the so-called "Lancet" study, but it may be that the data coming from Iraq too markedly undermines editorial positions posted by IBC such as the following from Mar 18, 2007:

The daily violence remains Iraq’s greatest civil concern. The data we have presented over the last four years show that there has never been a sustained period when things have not been deteriorating on the security front. Contrary to statements from President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that there are ‘encouraging signs’ of progress in Iraq, and that ‘things are going reasonably well,’ the violence this last week was at the usual high levels. This innocent death toll is the blunt and ever-louder signal of a horribly failed policy. The US-UK designed military-interventionist “solution” for Iraq has clearly turned out to be no such thing. Talk of "civil war" should not disregard the US-UK policies which led to it, and the continued military presence, far from being a solution, is at the core of Iraq’s problems. The Coalition needs to finally begin handing control of Iraq back to Iraqis. If it keeps deferring this obligation, what hope is there that year five won’t be even worse than year four?
("Year Four: Simply the worst")

Has IBC packed it in or begun to pack it in as the Iraq War has neared its end?

Update:

Well this thing works, anyway:

clipped from www.iraqbodycount.org

Note the revised numbers since yesterday.

I've contacted Iraq Body Count and confirmed that they're just running behind a bit. Hopefully I can add more detail later.

Update 2:

See also
Update on Iraq Body Count

Iraq Body Count: "Surge" project terminated for lack of interest?

The folks over at "Iraq Body Count" started a project intended to gauge the effectiveness of the "surge" strategy. In the words of the project sub-heading:

What effect is the increase in US troop deployment to Baghdad having on violence against civilians?

Though I'd visited IBC a few times to take a look at their figures, I had not run across this page before. I was intrigued to see that it ran up through September and no further.

From a sidebar:

The stated purpose of the US military 'surge' begun in February 2007 (Operation Fardh al-Qanoon) was to provide security for the civilian population, especially in Baghdad, and contain its sectarian violence.

The trend in violent deaths is the most direct indicator of population security.

The numbers shown reflected a decrease in violent deaths. But IBC was concerned that readers not draw the wrong conclusion. From a "Note for the second and third week of September, 2007":

These charts sometimes indicate a modest improvement in the security situation for ordinary Iraqis post-surge, and this is not disputed. But these charts will tend to under-represent reported violence for the more recent periods, for the reasons stated above. The observed downward trend in these charts will likely become less marked as data still in the pipeline is added (see Recent Events for as yet unprocessed data).

Thus, even a trend showing an improved security situation may not reflect an improving security situation since the figures run somewhat behind.

Fortunately, now that November has arrived we can take the September figures as fairly stable, even if we might register some surprise that IBC ceased its interest in the trend of violence after September.

Please note that IBC acknowledged that the aim of the surge was primarily to quell violence in Baghdad. I prepared a graph based on the combined numbers of shooting and bomb deaths in Baghdad as provided by IBC (I did the addition in my head, so accuracy is not absolutely guaranteed).

Click to enlarge, and cut me a break on the weak attempt to change the color of the first two bars.

In spite of the hints that IBC intended to highlight the failure of the surge (that is, the apparent termination of the project in September as well as the cautionary notes), the numbers appear to unequivocally support the success of the surge (under the assumption that compilation of the graph remained dynamic so as to make September numbers reasonably comparable to July numbers).

Here is a graph showing the combined numbers (Baghdad and the remainder of Iraq, shooting and bomb deaths combined):



It tells pretty much the same story: a downward trend for violent deaths.

*****