Thursday, October 12, 2006
PLEASE CONSIDER
Lancet’s number of documented deaths in Iraq, upon which the respected medical journal based its Iraqi mortality study, is but a mere 0.0835% of Lancet‘s estimated post-invasion death total.
The “estimate” part of Lancet’s equation is 99.9%.
UPDATE. Donald Berry, Chairman of the Department of Biostatistics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, says the study is unreliable:
The last thing I want to do is agree with Bush, especially on something dealing with Iraq. But I think ‘unreliable’ is apt. (I just heard Bush say ‘not credible.’ ‘Unreliable’ is better. There is a certain amount of credibility in the study, but they exaggerate the reliability of their estimate.)
Click for more.
UPDATE II. A claimed London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine epidemiologist and former WHO staffer comments:
I think that there is a humanitarian disaster continuing in Iraq but this paper is ultimately flawed and worse it is actually misleading if not downright dishonest.
UPDATE III. A Blair’s Law moment: the John Birch Society sings Lancet’s tune.