Sunday, October 22, 2006
METHODOLOGY FLAWED
Lancet latest:
Researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and Oxford University have found serious flaws in the survey of Iraqi deaths published last week in the Lancet.
Professor Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway’s Economics Department, and physicists Professor Neil Johnson and Sean Gourley of Oxford University contend that the study’s methodology is fundamentally flawed and will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq.
Among other Lancet critics: Paul Bolton, a professor of international health at Boston University; Stephen Apfelroth, professor of pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City; and mortality studies expert Richard Garfield. Labor’s Kevin Rudd puts the death toll at 50,000, some 605,000 below the Lancet study’s estimate.