In This Article
Subscribe to International Updates
Iraqi War Casualty Statistics Under the Microscope
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Newsmagazine National Journal claims statistics for the civilian death toll in Iraq were inflated by esteemed medical publication The Lancet. The scientific journal defends its peer review process.
30-Second Summary
In October 2006, The Lancet published a study that put the number of war-related deaths at around 655,000—a figure 10 times higher than earlier statistics from human rights watchdogs, the Pentagon and Iraqi officials.
The statistics were released at a sensitive time, just before the U.S. midterm elections. Within a week of the article’s being published, it was mentioned nearly 200 times in the U.S. media.
In January this year, National Journal printed a piece scrutinizing the Lancet figures, the research methods used and the people behind the project. The article argues that the sample size used for polling was too small. It also questioned the wisdom of applying a formula that dictated that every death mentioned by respondents equaled 2,000 deaths in the whole of Iraq.
Furthermore, the National Journal piece said that one of The Lancet study’s chief data collectors and article co-author Riyadh Lafta was an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Health under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. This might indicate a conflict of interest.
Questions of political bias aside, the debate over the validity of the statistics has led some to question the medical journal’s peer-review process. National Journal writers Neil Munro and Carl Cannon alleged that Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, fast-tracked the article past the journal’s usual meticulous rounds of fact-checking “without seeing the surveyors’ original data.”
Les Roberts, another chief co-author of the study, defended the statistics in a BBC interview, saying, “In actuality, during times of war, it is rare for even 20 percent [of deaths] to be detected.”
The statistics were released at a sensitive time, just before the U.S. midterm elections. Within a week of the article’s being published, it was mentioned nearly 200 times in the U.S. media.
In January this year, National Journal printed a piece scrutinizing the Lancet figures, the research methods used and the people behind the project. The article argues that the sample size used for polling was too small. It also questioned the wisdom of applying a formula that dictated that every death mentioned by respondents equaled 2,000 deaths in the whole of Iraq.
Furthermore, the National Journal piece said that one of The Lancet study’s chief data collectors and article co-author Riyadh Lafta was an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Health under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. This might indicate a conflict of interest.
Questions of political bias aside, the debate over the validity of the statistics has led some to question the medical journal’s peer-review process. National Journal writers Neil Munro and Carl Cannon alleged that Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, fast-tracked the article past the journal’s usual meticulous rounds of fact-checking “without seeing the surveyors’ original data.”
Les Roberts, another chief co-author of the study, defended the statistics in a BBC interview, saying, “In actuality, during times of war, it is rare for even 20 percent [of deaths] to be detected.”
Headline Link: ‘The Lancet’s Political Hit’
The Wall Street Journal reports on the flak fired on The Lancet following allegations that it inflated statistics on the number of civilians killed in Iraq since the 2003 American invasion. The death toll, projected at some 655,000, was roughly 10 times higher than figures given by U.S. and Iraqi sources, as well as those provided by some human rights interest groups. Critics of the Lancet report say that the number of households sampled was far too small and not enough locations were covered. The results were released three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections. The Wall Street Journal argues that “the timing was no accident,” given that a large amount of the funding was provided by billionaire George Soros, an outspoken critic of the Iraq War. The Lancet Editor Richard Horton allegedly pushed the article through the journal’s rigorous peer-review process “without seeing the surveyors’ original data,” said writers Neil Munro and Carl Cannon. The Wall Street Journal also says that the chief data collector was Riyadh Lafta, an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Health under Saddam Hussein and an author of articles purporting that Iraqis were suffering from cancer due to uranium shells left by American shelling.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Background: The National Journal article
Newsmagazine National Journal first broke the story suggesting that The Lancer’s statistics and collection methods could be perhaps flawed. President George W. Bush, when first questioned about the 2006 report, discounted the figures as being too high, a media frenzy ensued. Bush was widely ridiculed and the article was featured in 25 news shows and 188 articles in newspapers and magazines. Yet none questioned the feasibility of the statistics given. The research was conducted using a “cluster” sampling technique often employed in developing countries with limited telecommunications infrastructure. The formula used by the researchers translated into “each death recorded by the surveyors extrapolated to 2,000 deaths in the Iraqi population.”
Source: National Journal
Reactions: The Lancet authors
Les Roberts, one of the main authors of the report in The Lancet, gave an interview with the BBC refuting criticism, inviting public participation. Media Lens, a UK-based Web site devoted to transparency in the media, has the unedited transcript of Roberts’ interview. One questioner, an Iraqi, asked Roberts why many find The Lancet’s figures hard to accept. Roberts responds, “I think it is hard to accept these results for a couple of reasons ... People do not see the bodies. In actuality, during times of war, it is rare for even 20 percent [of deaths] to be detected. Also, there has been so much media attention given to the surveillance-based numbers put out by the coalition forces, the Iraqi Government and a couple of corroborating groups, that a population-based number is a dramatic contrast."
Source: Media Lens
Opinion & Analysis: The new math
SoCalPundit, a blog that describes itself as a source of “news & views about the nation and the world from the perspective of California Conservatives,” cites a host of figures in The Lancet’s study that he finds questionable. He refers to a statement made in the news-breaking article in the National Review, a magazine that the blogger once called “a liberally partisan attack machine for the Democrats.” Apparently a car bomb in Sadr City that killed 60 was included in the statistics, although it happened a day after the research was concluded.
Source: SoCalPundit
Iraq Body Count (IBC), a Web site and organization that keeps a running tally of the number of Iraqi civilian casualties, argues that The Lancet findings are false. If the figures were accurate, says the IBC, it would mean that some 7 percent of the Iraqi male population would have been killed. IBC also says that were they true, the Lancet figures would entail “bizarre and self-destructive behavior on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant Iraqis.” The IBC’s rebuttal concludes that Lancet research team’s report was “unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy."
Source: Iraq Body Count
The Red Maryland blog (the masthead of which reads, “a blog of conservative and Republican ideas in the Free State”) disparages The Lancet study. The author writes that the data collection methods were manipulated so that even the smallest changes would yield a huge divergence from U.S. and Iraqi official numbers. The blog looks at former Iraqi Health Ministry’s Riyadh Lafta’s role in the research. He “assembled the survey teams, deployed them throughout Iraq, and assembled the results and has refused to answer questions about his methods.” In addition to any perceived holes in the study’s design, he points to a lack of transparency in the data and the political leanings of the chief backers of the report. According to the blog, nearly half of the funding came from George Soros. Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the report, has admitted the survey team “wanted to get the survey out before the election, if at all possible.”
Source: Red Maryland
Reference Material: The Lancet article: Iraq Body Count
The much-scrutinized article in British medical journal The Lancet is available in PDF format.
Source: The Lancet
Iraq Body Count, a Web site and organization that “records the violent civilian deaths that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention in Iraq.” It keeps a weekly and cumulative total of war-related deaths in the country, as well as descriptions of its methods and recent incidents.
Source: Iraq Body Count
Most Recent Beyond The Headlines
© 2012 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
