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“BUNCH OF WUSSESS”
Charming Lindsay Beyerstein includes Baghdad resident Omar Fadil in a list of innumerate cowards who reject Lancet’s study. Interesting logic from Lindsay; apparently cowardly Omar is living and working in a land where, according to her, 500 people are killed every single day. Lindsay’s readers aren’t too bright, either:
Bunch of wussess. Not one of those SOB has the guts to go alone into Iraq.
UPDATE. Innumerate cowards unite!
UPDATE II. Archie T.:
Omar has lived in Iraq before, during, and after the invasion, and resides there today. Some coward. Omar’s pediatrician brother-in-law was murdered recently when he opened a clinic.
I like the fellow who says “wingers” can’t understand the Lancet study because they were home-schooled in creationism.
What. The. Fuck. Does that mean? If you shook him hard enough, you could hear his itny brain rattle around in his skull like a little unpopped corn kernel in a big bowl. If you hit him like he was a pinata, only one piece of candy would fall out by the time you’d broken him open.
#1 posted by a loyal Blairite with great insights into current affairs (and I don’t mean MentalFloss!)—
. . . It’s not facts, it’s pre-election propaganda designed to help the Democrats take Congress in the November elections. It’s biased, flawed . . . NOW, butch, anti-Bush looney. Seems to all fit a pattern of some sort.
I know what it is. Mary Mapes and the fake TAG memo. Fake but accurate.
Take that paco!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 13 at 06:02 AM • permalinkThe NYT seems to have had a shot of steroids, now asking the US to go around the UN and act unilaterally. We all say in chorus with Captain’s Quarters blog:“Why only now?”
(see “Cowboy Diplomacy” - “After ridiculing George Bush as a unilateralist cowboy for most of his term in office, the New York Times demands more unilateralism from the White House in its editorial today. The Gray Lady wants Bush to start bypassing the United Nations on a range of issues, a rather startling 180-degree turn.”)
Is it that even the NYT is realising -rather late in the piece - that the UN won’t do anything about ... anything?#5 a perfectly stunning neologism that should serve to characterise all such politcally twisted statistical analyses in future!
Well done, blogstrop.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 13 at 06:54 AM • permalink#5 blogstrop:
did you just invent something? Is that psychomath, or polimath? or how about polistatics? or psychopolistatics?
But still, there is a term for what’s been going on here
Psycho-social manipulation via psuedo demographics.
Manipulating a population and its behavior through purposely manufactured propagandized demographic data which appears based on scientifically sound methods.
I like the fellow who says “wingers” can’t understand the Lancet study because they were home-schooled in creationism.
We’re the ones “questioning authority” and thinking critically; they’re the ones taking a rather dubious excercise in “science” as (heh) gospel.
Who’s acting more like a Hollywood-style home-schooled creationist?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 13 at 07:13 AM • permalinkAnd then there’s this from the followers of <strike>Allah</strike>Satan - 14 year old boy crucified.
I feel ill, the terrorists are getting more frenzied, more vile, there is no depth of depravity they wont go to, one dies and there’s another one waiting. Dealing with these people in a civilised manner will never work. (And then there’s the real terrorists in Iraq!).
I haven’t read the study - the math would probably be beyond me - but does the original sample include terrorists killed in action? Iraqis killed due to skirmishes between Sunni and Shi’ia militias? Are the samplers even sure that all the dead in the sample are Iraqis, as opposed to foreigners (e.g., Jordanian and Saudi jihadists)?
The commenter is an idiot.
(...and it has been a long time since I heard anyone use the word ‘wuss’.)
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2006 10 13 at 09:30 AM • permalinkMaybe Detective paco could figure it out.
Or maybe the Hardley Boys could solve this mystery, although I doubt that they’d be getting any raging clues to follow.
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 10 13 at 09:56 AM • permalinkHmmm.
Anybody remember that “scandal” over “lost” explosives at Al-Cacca?
Yeah this is more Al-Cacca.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 10 13 at 10:13 AM • permalinkA letter exchange that is that like “waco” to “paco”, paco?
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 10 13 at 10:31 AM • permalinkWhy God, oh why did I go to that website!!?? The stark raving lunacy found there is simply depressing. Is it genetics, environment, excessive drug use, mental illness or any combination thereof that causes these people to think like this? I seriously cannot remember ever meeting someone who thinks this way, or at least they had the decency not to admit it to me. What a clueless bunch harping magpies. Its like their saying, “Don’t talk to me about common sense, rational thought or sanity! Its a fact! So shut up cowards!”
They sound like a pack of Rachel Corries (pre-pancake of course).
I would so love to take them on a tour of Iraq.
Nah, scratch that. With my luck they’d get hit with an IED and I’d never hear the end of it.That website is no worse than 4 or 5 others than come to mind. Think of it as comic relief, until perhaps November 8th.
I can’t really decide whether to refer to myself as a “pentagoon” or a “fascist fux in the Regime”. Decisions!
I think I will go with “fascist fux in the Regime” It bespeaks of a certain level of urbanity and utter sophistication that I think I deserve on this Friday morning.
Just read Mr Fadil’s words and this has really made me very sad
This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.
For the anti-war people everywhere, and the Americans who are only interested in destroying Pres Bush - these words would mean nothing really as I’m certain they don’t care
If Mr Fadil was to say this to them in person they still wouldn’t care as it doesn’t fit in with the Big Agenda
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 13 at 11:16 AM • permalinkI hate to quibble, but is there something wrong with “all of those SOB” Isn’t SOB singular in its default position? Just asking.
I am so going to use the following; “Still, it is true, in the calculus of ethical burdens…..” El Loco is obviously a college prof. and has, therefore, been turned loose on all of those young skulls full of mush out there. That is what I would be very worried about. This guy is “boots on the ground” everyday out there and not just some guy who simply posts for recreation.
#27, aussiemagpie:
I agree. It is because of people like Mr Fadil and the guy behind Sandmonkey (Egyptian blogger) and a others I occasionally stumble upon from links in those sites that I work real hard at keeping my natural inclination towards “kill em all"ism suppressed.
Anywhere there’s decent folk like them, there’s other decent folk like them. I wish none of them harm or hurt.
Still, gotta get on with routing out the bad ones though. Cant let kindness breed weakness. That helps no one.
That’s right, aussiemagpie. It’s just like every asshole who calls Bush “Hitler” etc. is just as guilty of being a Holocaust denier as Zundel or any of the other such assholes.
BTW, TexasBob, mmm, pancakes.
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 10 13 at 11:29 AM • permalink#29 Grimmy
Still, gotta get on with routing out the bad ones though. Cant let kindness breed weakness. That helps no one.
Total agreement with you there Grimmy
However it’s the ignorant people in Western countries who couldn’t give a stuff about what happens to the good people in Iraq and in other Muslim hellholes - just see things through their lefty prism - support the other side any side other than our own
Like this Lancet editor who is in my opinion is just like the Newsweek bloke who published the false Koran down the loo thing
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 13 at 11:34 AM • permalink#30 andycanuck
It’s this disconnect which really gets to me - and this denial of history (or lack of knowledge about history)
How much longer to we have to put up with this Western Civilisation destroying programme?
Me - I’m totally sick of Marxism, Political Correctness, Multi Culturalism and the rest
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 10 13 at 11:41 AM • permalinkThe Lancet study notes that 2/3rds of the violent deaths were reported in Fallujah. Yes, that Fallujah. The researchers/propagandists only note this as a curiousity as they extrapolate the figure out to the entire country.
Oh, yeah, nothing wrong with that methodology.
Omar has every right to be furious.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 10 13 at 11:43 AM • permalinkSpiny.
I think they used the right methodology. It got them to the exact result they were looking for. This has nothing to do with reality only with advancing an agenda. They decide the result they want and the use whatever methodology that is reaquired.
It doesn’t matter how you play the game, it is only the bottom line that counts.
That is why I would have put post-modernism at the top of that list in #32. You can only get away with methodology like this if you live in a post-modernist world. Clinton was our first post-modernist president and look where it got us.
they can barely contain their glee. “Over half a million dead! suck on that, wingnuts!” Sheesh, let em have some fun, Tim, before the study is completely debunked and they have to pretend like this all never happened.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 13 at 12:13 PM • permalinkThe paradox of the Lancet study is that they confirmed the accuracy of passive methods such as death certificates, yet their final estimated death toll is an order of magnitude greater than that obtained via passive methods. The most reasonable explanation for this is that they used clusters with unusually high death tolls.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 13 at 12:42 PM • permalinkWhen I was about 12 we had two cases of identical cancer in two boys aged 14 in the same year in a town of 300. Was this a ‘cluster’ (another term used bogusly by certain epidemologists)? No, not one case in the next 45 years, so nothing there causing it.
OTOH, if I had extrapolated it out, then, given the US population was around 240,000,000 at the time, dividing by 300 and then multiplying by 2 we obviously had 800,000 cases of childhood cancer of one type in the country that year, among all boys aged around 14.
Or, using the Lancet study methodology, if we’d asked every household if they *knew* some child who’d died of cancer, every single HH knew two, so every boy aged 14 or so should have died of cancer *twice* that year.
Of all the dodgy methodologies I’m aware of, cluster analysis epidemological models applied to non-contagious causes is probably the worst.
Not that I’d expect a gleeful Lefty to care. They probably still believe that cell phones cause brain cancer, as does living near power lines. Evidently, everyone in the Western world should be dropping dead of brain cancer any time now, given the ubiquity of cell phones and the placement of power lines.
They’re not *just* innumerate, they’re scientifically more ignorant that those they accuse of being creationists.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 10 13 at 01:26 PM • permalinkThe Lancet study notes that 2/3rds of the violent deaths were reported in Fallujah. Yes, that Fallujah.
My understanding of statistical sampling is you could only use an aberrant number like the Fallujah sample to project the estimated total number for Fallujah. If they used that number to project over the whole country, that’s sheer incompetence. Or worse, blatant fraud.
If that’s the case, then that requires a resignation by the survey makers and an abject apology. On Karl’s desk by 4 pm!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 13 at 03:03 PM • permalinkInnumerate cowards unite!
Illiterates of the world, untie!
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 10 13 at 04:27 PM • permalinkI still dont get it.
1. They are liars.
2. They are not even slick liars.
3. They have openly demonstrated a lack of integrity.
4. They have openly demonstrated a lack of honor.
5. They have openly demonstrated allegiance to our common enemy.
6. They have produced an overt piece of propaganda.Yet, everyone seems dead set on believing that they actually bothered to go around honestly collecting data, simply because they said so.
Reasons to doubt they ever even attempted to collect data.
1. No headlines splashed across various news pages for days and days with shrill shrieks over their kidnapped or murdered data collectors.
2. No overt agenda driven attempt to spin those kidnappings and/or murders into yet more proof that the US is purposely targeting those that oppose the “illegal invasion”.
3. No calls from any of the British Gov agencies for a “full and complete” investigation into the deaths of those data collectors.
4. No open accusations from those same Brits against the US for purposely murdering those data collectors, “because, Americans are just evil like that, dont you know”?So, you know you been lied to. You know it is a blatant attempt to manipulate emotions and turn the weak minded and stupid by their propaganda. Yet, you still assume that they actually went to the trouble and risk of honestly trying to collect the data, simply because they said they did.
I really dont get it.
Hmm, just reading over the longer version of the study that was linked on an earlier thread, and I noticed something that seems to indicate to me that these people really don’t understand statistics, or are deliberately trying to deceive about the accuracy of their results. But then, I’m not one to talk (econ degree = knows just enough statistics to be dangerous to himself), so maybe somebody else can confirm.
Here we go:
... the confidence interval ranges from 426,369 to 793,663. That means that we are 95% certain that the correct number is between those two, and 601,027 is the statistically most probable number. The likelihood that another number is the correct number decreases very rapidly as one moves up or down from the figure of 601,027
Now, the distribution isn’t a continuous function (or the probability for the number to be correct would be exactly zero, I recall that much from my stats training), but given the huge interval it’s certainly quasi-continuous, so even that “most probable number” should have a miniscule probability, right?
Grimmy:
Actually, it might be simpler to ask for the data collector’s travel expense receipts.
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2006 10 13 at 10:07 PM • permalinkOne note i might put in. I read most of the report and they left out the data from Falluja in their calculations.
Not having a go at anyone but best if we dont hurt our own side by bashing away at strawmen.
The fact that they obviously considered falluja is fairly telling though.
I wonder how carefully some of the “main road samples” follow known hotspots and incidents though? Without any indication of locations it would be impossible to tell.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 10 13 at 10:16 PM • permalinkOh, and that diagram I previously bitched about, the one where they seemed to claim that two absolute graphs confirm their rate graph? The full version of the study actually makes the bullshit explicit:
... the figure shows that over time the trends are almost identical. This is clear evidence that the three studies have measured the same events, and further reinforces the results of the population based data.
Completely amazing. Random high-schoolers will be able to tell you that a function and its first derivative (with respect to time, in this case) aren’t remotely the same thing, but these people just flat out claim “are too!” and consider the superficial similarity in slope to be “clear evidence” in support of their results.
Either the study authors are complete imbeciles when it comes to calculus (how ironic that Magicthighs and her loony band of hangers-on are calling us “innumerate”), or they’re the most brazen liars I’ve ever encountered.
I mean, I know that lefties and transparent lies go together like pancakes and maple syrup, but this would be a new level. It’s literally stuff that 9th graders should be able to see through.
Checking her post, she apparently found ten links with less than suitable admiration for the study’s rigour. At which point, Miss Beyerstein had to stop counting because she ran out of typing fingers. Thus being in a state of momentary distress, she attempted to type “Inumerable Cowards”, but with the results as observed. PIMF (open source variant).
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 10 13 at 10:58 PM • permalink47. PW I found a claim by the reports head that they had excluded it from the 2004 set of data. I assumed they would have left it out of the latest so they could get that pretty upward trend they were after. My fault for not cheecking the date on the article I read.
I use the word claim deliberately and with a large helping of salt.
Without any idea of the areas or basis of the raw data supposedly used the figures could be pulled from their own asses for all I know.
The reports author was and may still run as a democratic candidate. The result of the last survey and this one are released to try and influence an American political outcome.
I see no reason to give the report any credibility beyond that Id give something on indymedia.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 10 14 at 12:10 AM • permalink
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Beyerstein calls the study facts. It’s not facts, it’s pre-election propaganda designed to help the Democrats take Congress in the November elections. It’s biased, flawed, and Beyerstein should be disavowing it.
By the way, her photo is not exactly representative of her looks. Based on a prior post she wrote on her journey to a NOW conference, she looks rather butch. Hmmm. NOW, butch, anti-Bush looney. Seems to all fit a pattern of some sort. Maybe Detective paco could figure it out.