An extraordinary posting on Medialens by someone calling themself Plus Ultra, in which he/she/it claims I said a number of things I absolutely did not say. Either Plus Ultra is so stupid it faces imminent extinction, or this is a case of deliberate misconstruction. But to what end?
BEGINS
Murray’s reaction to the ‘rebel’ takeover of Tripoli is deplorable. He makes several undetermined and ‘wishful’ points:
1. That there has been not as much bloodshed as he previously thought there would be
2. That the NATO bombing – which is a blatant violation of 1973 – has been justified in achieving the aim of 1.
3. There is a great deal of support for the rebels – which is as yet unproven given that no elections have been held!
4. That the west’s attempt at getting rid of ‘a bad government’ is somehow ok
5. That NATO can proceed to attack Bahrain.
His Article:
Fall of Tripoli:
“It seems that Gadaffi’s regime has collapsed very quickly at the end. It is difficult to be sure as yet, but it seems there may have been mercifully less further bloodshed than might have been feared. Thank goodness the NATO bombing campaign will now end.
It is plain that there is a great deal of support from ordinary citizens of Tripoli for the rebellion. Whether that translates into specific support for the leadership of the Transitional National Council is quite a different question. Getting rid of a bad government is difficult, but not as difficult as establishing a good one. The next few weeks will be very interesting.
The mainstream news media will move on in a few days, as it has moved on from Egypt. Not all pro-democracy demonstrators arrested under Mubarak have yet been released under the new military government there. However it is good to see anti-Israeli demonstrations are allowed. That is a major advance on the Mubarak years. NATO may yet find it equally difficult to hijack the Libyan people to their agenda.
Now of course NATO are free to move on to oust the despotic, torturing regime of Bahrain. Or not.”
Pass me the bucket…
END QUOTE
It seems extraordinary I have to ask this, but if someone can explain my article to Plus Ultra in the comments, that would be good.
George Field: “What is wrong with the figures concerning Iraqi deaths gathered by the Lancet? Surely a peer-reviewed group of experts can provide a better overall analysis than that garnered by the IBC? ”
Short answer: The Lancet study was a fraud and is false.
For the longer answer, and since you suggest you care about peer-reviewed experts and such, here are eight peer-reviewed papers that reject the Lancet study on a variety of grounds.
This is the one that best lays out the evidence that the survey was a fraud:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242690802496898
And here are a further seven:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0707782
http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/article/review/review-868-p943.htm
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2010.491678
http://www.prio.no/Research-and-Publications/Journal-of-Peace-Research/Article-of-the-year/Article-of-the-Year-2008/
arxiv.org/pdf/0807.4420
http://www.warc.com/Pages/Taxonomy/Results.aspx?SubjectRef=247&Filter=All
http://www.bepress.com/ijb/vol5/iss1/4/
Beyond all these peer-reviewed papers, here are a few other things you should read to see what is wrong with it:
http://www.aapor.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PressRoom/RecentPressReleases/AAPORFindsGilbertBurnhaminViolationofEthicsCode/default.htm
http://www.aapor.org/uploads/AAPOR_Press_Releases/BurhnamDetailWebsite.pdf
http://www.cedat.be/publication/cred-working-paper-estimating-mortality-civil-conflicts-lessons-iraq
http://www3.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2008/0104nj1.htm
Oh, and if you’re going to reach for the ORB poll as supposedly “corroborating” the Lancet survey, that estimate is a crock too:
http://w4.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm/article/view/2373
@pspec899 – I am not necessarily doubting the thrust of your post, but witness that it is very interesting how evidence against Western interests are subject to so much more rigorous analysis than evidence that supports them.
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I wonder, where do we go now for the best count, if both studies are unreliable? IBC of course is fundamentally flawed, since it relies on media reportage.
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> since you suggest you care about peer-reviewed experts and such
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I don’t know George, but why would you be cynical about that? It is always best to assume good faith, I think, unless good evidence is available to the contrary.
Jon, here’s an answer drawn from the ICRC paper i cited above:
“Perhaps the best that the public can be given is exactly what IBC provides – a running tally of deaths derived from knowledge about incidents. While imperfect, that knowledge, supplemented by the wealth of data of the Iraq Living Conditions Survey and Iraq Family Health Survey (which have their own limitations), provides enough information in the light of the circumstances. At a later date, additional surveys can be conducted to determine the impact and/or do demographic analysis. But for now, the Iraq Body Count’s imperfect figures combined with the date of the ILCS and IFHS may suffice.”
IBC’s “fundamental flaws” (a.k.a. limitations) are a lot less than some have wanted to believe. If you want sources that don’t have any flaws on this question, I think you’ll be waiting a while.