Allahpundit says: ” Not for the first time, either, but the previous challenge had to do with methodology. The new questions raise the possibility of fraud.”
Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports:
Professor Gilbert Burnham, Dr Les Roberts and Dr Shannon Doocy at the Centre for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, decided to work through Iraqi doctors, who speak the language and know the territory:
Dr [Richard] Garfield also queries the high availability of death certificates. Why, he asks, did the team not simply approach whoever was issuing them to estimate mortality, instead of sending interviewers into a war zone?:
Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in conflict. In her letter to the Lancet, she pointed out that it was unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: “Assuming continuous interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes per interview, including walking between households, obtaining informed consent and death certificates.”:
Professor Burnham says the doctors worked in pairs and that interviews “took about 20 minutes”. The journal Nature, however, alleged last week that one of the Iraqi interviewers contradicts this. Dr Hicks says: : “I have started to suspect that they [the American researchers] don’t actually know what the interviewing team did. The fact that they can’t rattle off basic information suggests they either don’t know or they don’t care.”
Trackposted to Right Pundits, Stop the ACLU, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, Overtaken by Events, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, and The Bullwinkle Blog, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
So with the smaller “more realistic” value of 50,000 civilian victims, the whole story really sounds like peanuts…
Mattias,
Have you publically condemned Wahabist killings of civilians on English speaking websites yet, or are you continuing to be a cowardly hypocrite?
2- Have you done that?
Give me the link to a site and I’ll do it..
And… will you then stop bothering me?
Now Matthias. Asking someone to stop engaging in the behavior you exhibit-is a rather circular argument.
And besides. It’s too much fun to ‘bother’ people who are so easily ‘bothered’.
3, Mattias, I have been giving you such sites. You won’t write Hamas. You won’t write the Kent State Professor who promotes Jihad and is brainwashing his students. So, you ask for another site after ignoring several. I have to question you sincerity.
3, Wahabist link for Mattias to try
Do you need your diaper changed, too?
Why the need to lie and add 600,000 to the figure?
Perhaps lying is just so ingrained into the behavior of the Left they just can’t help themselves. Kind of like the Klintons. They lied about silly, inconsequential things that really didn’t matter, that nobody really cared about. But they lied anyway. Maybe it was to keep their lying skills honed? Or as Leftists, they just can’t help but lie, even when there is no need to?
They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Here’s another one of my truisms, one I have been saying for about as long as I have been saying that Liberalism is a form of mental illness:
The Left lies, absolutely.
Can you realy at times expect any studies commited by liberals to be truthful its just like CNN/TIMES or AP/UPIs fake polls showing so called support for more gun control their all fruadelent:roll:
4- Cao,
if you read some of the threads in which I posted my comments, you will see that I referred to the topic itself. If you look in the same threads for posts by PCD, you will see that at least half of her responses/comments attack or insult my person directly (NOT really the topic) with the usual nonsense and also with the statement “Why don’t you complain somewhere else..”
Maybe it was my fault to respond to PCD again (despite my intention to ignore her), but then half of the threads will consist of unproductive and redundant impolite descriptions of my person/behaviour. I think this would be counterproductive to the serious claim of this site…
6- This site says something on its “About Us”-page about Black Untouchables of India… If you want me to post a statement there (actually there’s no guestbook/blog neither), you could also ask me to post something on a page on Brainsurgery in Iceland in the 19th century. Don’t you have something more obvious to offer? Some “We like Osama”-fansite, where I can post my pacifist opinion?
7- Peejz,
the article only indicates the possibility a lie but does not prove it. But I share your view- to me 50,000 slaugthered innocent people are not a less horrible crime than the murder of 650,000!
10. I agree with you Matthias. It seems as PCD is a juvenile just wanting to stir the pot. Go to the Bill Maher link below and you will see our correspondence.
This individual is ill educated, and highly immature. I assume that the reason PCD offers only personal attacks is because she does not have the ability to grasp the issue at hand.
Some of her comments are quite puzzling actually. A few were quite humorous where she attempts to attack me, while completely describing her own responses. I think she is a very confused individual.
While we may not agree with one another, it is important to remain civil.
Oopss, ‘Quote(s) Of The Day should read: 123beta
That’s what I get for using haloscan…
“Why the need to lie and add 600,000 to the figure?”
It isn’t a need per se. It is a reflection of the lack of imtegrity of thbose who use it. Anyone with the ability to critically think easily saw the falacies behind the figure. Only those who wish to lie to themselves saw otherwise, to justify various sordid positions.