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PEER REVIEW REVIEWED
Whenever he mentioned Lancet’s previous MegaDeath survey from Iraq, John Pilger always stressed that the report had been peer-reviewed:
“ ... this rigorously peer-reviewed report ... ”
“ ... a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet ... ”
“ ... a comprehensive peer-reviewed study in The Lancet ... ”
“ ... a peer-reviewed Anglo-American study, published in the British medical journal the Lancet ... ”
“ ... a peer-reviewed study in The Lancet ... ”
“ ... a Johns Hopkins Medical School study which was published and peer-reviewed in The Lancet ... ”
You get the picture; the study has been peer-reviewed, you proles! Don’t question it! Yet there are some who doubt the authority of peer review:
The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.
A recent editorial in Nature was right to conclude that an over-reliance on peer-reviewed publication “has disadvantages that should be countered by adequate provision of time and resources for independent assessment and, in the midst of controversies, publicly funded agencies providing comprehensive, reliable and prompt complementary information.”
Who is this peer-review heretic? Why, none other than Lancet editor Richard Horton.
(Via J.F. Beck, who has further Horton news. Also, please drop by the site of stats teacher Notropis, currently asking a few commonsense questions about the latest Lancet lunacy. Previous Lancet posts here, here, here, here, and here.)
Having done actual peer review for a very well respected physics journal, I can clarify some common misperceptions. Peer review does NOT mean the reviewer checked the actual data their own selves (meaning I never replicated the experiment to make sure they read the blinkenlights correctly and wrote it down in their notebooks without transcription errors.) All I did was make sure that a) there was enough data to support the assertions made in the paper and b) that the assertions and the data were connected in a logical fashion, based on my own experience. None of which seems to apply to the Lancet peer review system, but never mind. It is also true that some reviewers didn’t take the job as seriously as I did, and the number of reviewers required varied for different journals.
The author of a paper in review is trusted to have reported the data accurately—which is why when deliberate scientific fraud is found and proven, that individual is not considered one of us. Ever again.
Posted by bad cat robot on 2006 10 13 at 04:13 PM • permalink... which is why when deliberate scientific fraud is found and proven, that individual is not considered one of us.
Us? Which us? Certainly not the rightwing death beast cult that has almost completed its conquest of Earth if only Lancet and John Kerry would give up.
Is there another secret shadowy organization we should be wary of?
(hoping and praying this new “us” doesn’t have a name comprised of four words beginning with the letters P, A, C, and O).
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 13 at 04:49 PM • permalinkAll academic journals use peer review (they have to for their publications to count in the publish or perish environment). To use it as a means of establishing truth is absurb. It’s the tie that get you through the door.
Posted by David McBryde on 2006 10 13 at 05:16 PM • permalinkwronwright- “us” meaning the Union of Perturbed Mad Scientists. We do invite Paco now and then because he makes a good test subject for demonstrations. Not the moonbat kind, the scientific kind.
Posted by bad cat robot on 2006 10 13 at 06:10 PM • permalinkLikewise, I’ve had papers’ ‘peer reviewed’ and published in ‘scientific journals’.
The Golden Rule:
Know thy editor and where he stands on the subject.
If the editor isn’t a ‘believer’ he/she will simply reject the submission out of hand.*
If the editor is neutral but has a bias against the conclusions or subject of your paper, he/she will send it to the oppositon camp for peer review (more strictly known as ‘refereeing’) and the’ll do a hatchet job on it, allowing the Editor to reject the paper.
If the editor is a sympathiser (discovered by looking at the content of past editions of the journal) he / she will choose fellow sympathisers to ‘review’ the paper. It will come back with glowing reports and the Editor will immediatly give the paper a feature in his rag.* If this happens you are an idiot. In most fields, everyone knows where everone else stands on a subject - thats why things are published! - so you should NEVER have to send a paper to an editor where you think the material will be refereed on its merits only. You ‘journal shop’ until you find one which is in your camp.
Like Lancet and exaggerated Iraqi death counts.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 10 13 at 06:14 PM • permalinkI am sure that if my peers reviewed Pilger, they would find that he comes up awfully lame.
Posted by The Best Infidel on 2006 10 13 at 07:39 PM • permalinkI’ve done my share of peer reviews as well. Once I reviewed an article for an editor whose office was right down the hall. After I got it I walked it down to him and told him that the original must have had printing on both sides, because my photocopy only had every other page. He said, That’s strange; you’re the only one of three reviewers to have noticed that.
I loved peer reviewed tests at school. The unspoken code: Even the kid busy eating paste and licking windows will pass this test.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 10 14 at 12:50 AM • permalinkOnce upon a time ...
In ancient days, students were required to pass Grade 11 PhysEd in order to graduate from high school with a diploma. No PhysEd, no diploma, no job requiring diploma, etc. One member of the class waited until his final semester of high school before electing this required credit. He then ignored the instructor’s grading rules: 1) there is no final test; 2) final grade is based on participation; 3) the class votes on an individual’s final mark.
This individual decided to attend his third class of the semester on the final day, when marks would be handed out and he could explain his case. The collective conclusion was: “never saw him before; give him an “F”.” He pointed out to his class peers that he needed a minimum “Pass” to complete the year and qualify for his HS diploma. The collective response was “We know, and you still get an “F”.”
Sometimes peer-review does work.Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 10 14 at 01:10 AM • permalinkI got motivated to look at the known numbers by a number thrown out without source on a previous thread by Harry Edgar. His number of known dead of US/Coalition + Iraqi Sec Forces = 17k.
I looked and looked. I found the DoD resource that listed: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf
Total US Deaths = 2,752 to date
The only numbers I found for Iraqi Sec Forces & Police was *approx* 12k casualties with *approx* 4k of those actual deaths. This was from a CNN report and nothing official sited as source that I noticed.
So, if those numbers are *approx* correct then its right about ball park for a single battle fought by the US in the pacific during WW2 at a small island named Iwo Jima.In 36 days of fighting there were 25,851 US casualties (1 in 3 were killed or wounded).
Of these, 6,825 American boys were killed. Virtually all 22,000 Japanese perished.
28 days in the pacific vs 3 years in Iraq.
Statistics taken from the Canadian Human Mortality Database; year 2000 is the last reference given.
- deaths from January 1998 through December 2000: 625,234.
- add in the last 6 months of 1997 (which would equal the 3-1/2 years of the Iraqi conflict), and the Canadian mortality rate would increase to about 725,000.
- Canada’s population in 2000: approximately
30 million (some 30,007,000, to be exact);
Iraq’s population today: approximately
28.8 million.
- death took 2.42% of Canada’s population over the course of those 3-1/2 years.
- death from war alone took 2.27% of Iraq’s population over the course of the last 3-1/2 years.Extrapolation - There have been 1.35 million deaths in Iraq since March, 2003; 655,000 through war, 696,000 through all other causes (which matches Canada’s death rate). 1.35 million? in 3-1/2 years? Yeah, right.
Conclusion - Statistics are a mug’s game.
Speculation - Either Lancet is up their ass, or they have a political ax to grind. My belief is it’s about 50/50.
Firmly held belief - people who are against the Iraqi Freedom Project (perfect name, what?) have not got the brains of an ice cube.
Nature is trialling a ‘peer review by blog comments’ system at the moment. Authors agree to have their papers put online and anyone can comment on them - using their real name, of course. Out in the open, no hiding behind agendas. very interesting idea…
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2006 10 14 at 03:51 AM • permalink#28 Joe B. - According to CIA World Facts Iraq has a death rate of 5.5/1000. For Canada it is 7.8/1000. They don’t list the Palestinian Authority but I seem to recall seeing figures like 3.8/1000 for Gaza.
Rapidly growing populations like Iraq have a very large percentage of young people, and correspondingly few older people to show up in the death statistics. Even though life expectancy may be the same or lower, they still have dramatically lower death rates per 1000. From natural causes anyway.
Several critics of the Lancet study have erred on the same point.
#30, dipole:
Areas such as Iraq will also have a much higher infant mortality.
Also present would be a much higher rate of death from what would otherwise be easily treated infections and illnesses all along the sub adult age ranges.
Even with no war in that area, the availabilty of medical would be limited to only the most powerful or affluent of the communities.
That thing about higher percentage of young means nothing when put into context. The only time more young and less aged would matter to death rates would be in cultures where functional medical infrastructures exist and are utilized by the majority of the population.
And the UN would know that because?
Lets not forget that the UN is that “organization” that refused help in setting up any form of functional position defenses in Iraq and then got its silly self blown all to hell and back.
There’s no UN shop in Iraq. How’s the UN gathering its data? or is the UN just doing the “because we say so” thing too?
Another issue no one seems to want to mention. This is mostly driven by muslim killing muslim. What kind of dysfunction does it require to assume that it will all stop just because the US and its allies leave the area?
“And the UN would know that because?”
If you read the article you’d know why and how, wouldn’t you?
Fair dinkum, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel…
“The death toll, drawn from Iraqi government agencies, was the most precise measurement of civilian deaths provided by any government organization since the invasion and represented a substantial increase over the figures in daily news media reports.”
“In its report, the United Nations said that 14,338 civilians had died violently in Iraq in the first six months of the year.
United Nations officials said they had based their figures on tallies provided by two Iraqi agencies: the Ministry of Health, which tracks violent deaths recorded at hospitals around the country; and Baghdad’s central morgue, where unidentified bodies are delivered, a vast majority of which met violent deaths.
Each agency issues death warrants for the bodies it receives, government officials say, and there is no overlap between the two populations of victims.”
Now, given that the July 2006 death toll figures were some of the highest yet, enough to be constantly trumpeted by the MSM, and were still only an *eighth* of what The Lancet reckons is the *average daily figure since it’s last study*, I’d be confident in pronouncing it a conjob.
#4 Wronwright, I’ll take that new keyboard now, please. The one without the wires or the keys that get clogged up with fruitjuice.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 10 14 at 06:04 AM • permalink#31 Grimmy, you are wrong. Unless we are talking about different things.
Age distribution has a huge effect on the death rate. Here are two extreme examples:
Germany
0-14 years: 14.1%
Death Rate
10.62 deaths/1,000 populationSaudi Arabia
0-14 years: 38.2%
2.58 deaths/1,000 populationIraq has an age distribution similar to Saudi Arabia, but more than twice the natural death rate, possibly due to the factors you mention. Of course, if things get bad enough…
Zimbabwe
0-14 years: 37.4%
Death Rate
21.84 deaths/1,000 populationI’m not there so I’m obviously working off imperfect knowledge but from reading the postings of some of the medical personnel serving in Iraq, it appears to be as bad as anywhere I’ve ever traveled and I’ve traveled in some real nasty shit holes.
And, from what I am able to gather, I dont get the impression that its all because of the war, or even mainly because of the war. The reactions many of the locals express, as conveyed by the corpsmen and medics who work on these patrols tends to give the impression that the locals have never had access to medical or health resources.
Saudi Arabia is not a good reference point due to there being at least some resemblance of a medical infrastructure available to treat common ailments that can tend to be life threatening in children if left untreated.
Zimbabwe might be a better baseline to go by for comparaison but I am not real familiar with that area so only guessing, again.
Anyhoo, I badly stated what I was trying to get at in #31 and glad you called me on that.
That thing about higher percentage of young means nothing when put into context.
I should have said that better. What I was meaning to say is that baseline death-rates can be heavily influenced by issues other than percentage of aged vs young. Issues such as ubiquity of medical access, degree of medical competence available and general issues of infrastructure itself, such as roads/transport availability, sanitation, education, etc all have their impact as well.
During the mid-morning teabreak at the Tikrit Carbomb Works:
Achmed: Brothers, do you see how these alcohol-swilling infidels are now arguing among themselves over the validity of this marvelous Lancet martyrdom report?
Ali: It is a wonder. As long as they keep fighting among themselves, these Christian dogs will never amount to anything, but will remain steeped in idolatrous ignorance. Then the Caliphate will be restored even sooner than we expected.
Farouk: What do they squabble about this time? Al-Kerry versus al-Bush? Those bombs Saddam made us drive to Syria? Al-Coke versus Al-Pepsi?
Ali: Farouk, though I love you as a brother, you are as foolish as a shepherd who loses his flock to wolves while he dawdles about his prize ewe’s behind. It is the matter of peer-review, the means by which validity of important scientific texts is determined.
Farouk: What is this peer review? Also, this science?
Ali: well, the infidel version is of course all a heretical abomination. However, Islamic science is the source of all truth. Peer review is the understanding of it.
Achmed: Exactly. It is done thusly. When one has a question about the nature of the world, one consults the imam. The imam opens the Koran, wherein all scientific truths reside, and upon identifying the appropriate Shura, adjusts his spectacles and peers at it for a while. Because of this, they call it “peer review.” After mulling its proper interpretation, the imam says some things that are generally beyond common understanding, and you go home. Unless you have been watching Brittany Spears videos again and must be flogged to cleanse the western filth from your mind.
Farouk: You scab-encrusted mongrel! Who told you about that?
Ali: Farouk, the fish broilers of Baghdad sing of your fixation on the yellow-haired Ameriki trollop all along the banks of the Tigris. The loose women of Basra giggle under their burkahs at the thought of it. In Samara the mullahs wail about it from atop the ancient spiral minaret!
Farouk: By the Prophet’s holy theorems, I’ll teach you some science!
(Cartoon explosions and rings of smoke, with fists and mechanics’ boots protruding. The smoke clears to reveal Farouk trussed, with his hair standing out, bruised, wearing oversized crossed plasters, birds tweeting around his head as Ali dusts off his hands.)
Ali: Hee hee, hit me baby one more time!
Posted by crittenden on 2006 10 14 at 11:45 AM • permalinkPeer review is a bit like democracy - the least worst alternative. When you review an article, you can’t examine every aspect of it. You have to take it on trust that the authors have followed the book behind the scenes, for example with honest data collection. You never get to see the actual data. Rubbish can get through and good research can get rejected. It’s not a perfect system.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 14 at 03:17 PM • permalinkI guess the problem with peer review is that if you are a moron, then obviously the peers reviewing your work will also be morons. Forgive my skepticism, but having a gaggle of idiotic partisan hacks review the work of idiotic partisan hacks does not buttress the work’s authority in my mind.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 10 14 at 07:37 PM • permalink
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In other words its commie bullshit, pigler wouldnt like it it if it wasnt.