Comments on: On losing the will to live

By: toeternitoe

toeternitoe — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:51:00 +0000

I think the Lancets study is true crap really.
all self proclaimed statisticians sophisticated comments notwithstanding. sorry.

there is no indication from les roberts report that any effort was done in getting objective results.
only smooth talk, no actual filtering on pollers bias, answerers bias etc.

if pollers came at my door in 2004, living in Iraq,-> I would not open the door (the pollers in question had a 90% success rate in getting access: carpet sellers all over the world take note!)

if they had their foot in the door, I would give them the answer I thought they would like.
this is what the sample, and the report got : a couple of thousand of anxious people giving the answer they thought was the best to get the pollers away from their porche.

some kind of study...why not count deads in the graveyard or some other objective facts? -> because that would have been verifiable , accountable work.
not suitable for quick president campaigning.
this report belongs in the same intellectual category as deciding to shoot 4 poor geese out of the air.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:52:00 +0000

Sorry, I worded that appallingly, and deserved to be verbally slapped for it. Apologies. In my defense, I was in the middle of putting up shelves, which is distracting.

The aerial-photo method is based on counting the number of people on, as you say, a sample of the photos, and extrapolating the rest. However, that initial counting is still quite accurate because you can see each person on the photo. The police and organisers base their counts on estimates of how many people are probably in a given area based on estimates of crowd density based on looking at a load of moving people. Both methods involve extrapolation, but the former extrapolates from a count and the latter from a bunch of estimates.

As far as I can see, this means that I don't actually have a point and should shut up.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 04:53:00 +0000

"The aerial photograph method is accurate because it involves actually counting the number of people." -- no -- sampling and extrapolating, just like the Lancet study, actually. (Two questions: (1) did you not read the page? (2) If not, did you really believe that somebody sat down with a bunch of photographs counting and ticking off 65,000 people?)

By: john b

john b — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 04:52:00 +0000

S2: you’re exactly wrong on the protest-count issue. The coppers and protesters base their figures on counting, and they’re generally considered inaccurate; the aerial view method is based on sampling (like the Lancet study), and is generally considered accurate.

By: Natalie Solent

Natalie Solent — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 03:40:00 +0000

Dsquared, on infant deaths, it said there usually weren't death certificates for infant deaths - which does not mean, of course, that the claims were false, just that they could be. Also there was talk of reluctance to confirm non-infant deaths for fear of violence, so they settled on confirming a sample. I think an interviewer in a situation where violence is in the air might consciously or unconsciously seek confirmation from the more law-abiding looking interviewees.

I hope to return to the topic of figures for comparable conflicts, Darfur etc. later. Unfortunately not now, because I have to get to work.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:57:00 +0000

You’ve put your finger on it right there, Chris. The aerial photograph method is accurate because it involves actually counting the number of people. The figures given by police and protest organisers and news reporters are hopelessly inaccurate because they aren’t based on counting. The Lancet report was of the latter type.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:34:00 +0000

"If we can't even get an accurate estimate of the number of demonstrators at the Stop the War Coalition march yesterday in central London...."

Actually, if we cared enough, it'd be pretty easy to do so. Counts based on sampling from aerial photographs ought to be pretty accurate. See, e.g., these photographs from an anti-Iraq-war rally in San Francisco in February 2003.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 16:45:00 +0000

as there was no confirmatory data as far as I can see

Apart from the death certificates?

By: Eamonn

Eamonn — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:20:00 +0000

If we can't even get an accurate estimate of the number of demonstrators at the Stop the War Coalition march yesterday in central London (was it 20,000 or 45,000 or 100,000 or 200,000) then how on earth do we expect to get accurate figures from Iraq on those who have died?

More seriously, the actual figure of Iraq dead is important since if the 100,000 or more figure is true, it would be a devastating blow to those who saw the invasion as the liberation of Iraq. My guess is that before invasion, the coalition estimated civilian casualties in Iraq would be at most a very few thousand. My feeling is that a pre-invasion estimated figure of 100,000 dead would have put the brakes on a coalition invasion.

I do have experience with statistics; I cannot see anything wrong with the study as such, but there is the possibility of a very large degree of error in such extrapolatory statistics. A major assumption is that those interviewed were telling the truth, as there was no confirmatory data as far as I can see. Also, the death rate would suggest also many more hundreds of thousands injured, and I am puzzled as to why figures of such large numbers of wounded were not also collected.

My gut feeling is that the estimate is far too high. However, as with all studies based on statistics, what is urgently needed are further studies on deaths in Iraq. Only then will a reliable death toll be possible. The figure of 100,000 is just not reliable enough at present to be given real weight. However, from the anti-war literature, it seems that this figure is accepted as true.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 10:19:00 +0000

Perhaps, but I think you're missing an explanation why in 81% of the cases where the researchers asked for death certificates, they were produced and in the remaining cases there were good reasons produced why there was no death certificate.

By the way, I don't understand why you're claiming that the death rate found by the Lancey study in Iraq is comparable to that in Darfur; it's not. 100,000 deaths in eighteen months out of a population of c20m Iraqis is a much lower rate than ten thousand deaths a month out of c6m Darfurians