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Authors of Lancet Article Stand by Iraqi Death Toll Estimate
by
findingDulcinea Staff
In 2006, an article in The Lancet published a higher estimate for Iraqi civilian deaths than any NGO or government; serious doubts about the methodology used to arrive at that figure arose this year. The authors of the Lancet report respond.
30-Second Summary
The Lancet's October 2006 figures 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.
In January this year, the National Journal printed a piece arguing 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 researchers 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 accuracy 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. Consequently, it went to print having bypassed the journal’s fact-checking process.
When the National Journal’s article was picked up by The Wall Street Journal, the Lancet study’s principal authors, Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham, were moved to respond.
In the Journal on Jan. 9, Roberts wrote that his colleague Lafta was never a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Burnham said that the article’s peer-review process was thorough, and that sociologists and demographers had approved their data collection methods.
An article running Jan. 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine said that the extremely high figures in The Lancet’s study may be a result of “main street bias,” or an “oversampling of highly trafficked areas.”
In January this year, the National Journal printed a piece arguing 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 researchers 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 accuracy 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. Consequently, it went to print having bypassed the journal’s fact-checking process.
When the National Journal’s article was picked up by The Wall Street Journal, the Lancet study’s principal authors, Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham, were moved to respond.
In the Journal on Jan. 9, Roberts wrote that his colleague Lafta was never a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Burnham said that the article’s peer-review process was thorough, and that sociologists and demographers had approved their data collection methods.
An article running Jan. 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine said that the extremely high figures in The Lancet’s study may be a result of “main street bias,” or an “oversampling of highly trafficked areas.”
Headline Links: The authors respond
Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham, two of the The Lancet article's authors, defend the data collection methods and the results of the study in The Wall Street Journal. Roberts also supports his colleague Riyadh Lafta, who worked in the Iraqi Ministry of Health under Saddam Hussein, saying, “He was one of few professors in the country who never joined the Baath Party.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Les Roberts, one of the main authors of the report in The Lancet, gave an interview with the BBC refuting criticism and inviting public debate. 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 responded, “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
Background: The National Journal and The Wall Street Journal
The National Journal first broke the story suggesting that The Lancet’s statistics and collection methods could be flawed. President George W. Bush, when first questioned about the 2006 report, discounted the figures as being too high. Bush was widely criticized and the article was featured in 25 news shows and 188 articles in newspapers and magazines. Yet, according to the National Review, none questioned the accuracy 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
The Wall Street Journal reported on the National Journal article, concluding that the timing of the Lancet piece, which appeared three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections, was no coincidence.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Historical Context: The Lancet’s 2004 study
A study published by The Lancet in 2004 shows the death toll as of October that year topping 100,000. The findings, according to the British medical journal, were based on a sample size of 1,000. The report showed that the risk of death for Iraqi civilians was some 58 times higher than prior to the American invasion in March 2003. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said of the statistics, “For the sake of a country in crisis and for a people under daily threat of violence, the evidence we publish today must change heads as well as pierce hearts.”
Source: The BBC
Opinion & Analysis: Do the figures add up?
Catherine A. Brownstein and John S. Brownstein write in this Jan. 9 article in the New England Journal of Medicine that, in war-stricken zones, “the likelihood of finding good demographic data plummets.” They argue that household surveys—or going door-to-door to ask about deaths in the family—is a viable way of collecting data, but is more dangerous to researchers. The article cites statistics from the Iraqi Family Health Survey, which put the death toll at around 151,000 deaths—much lower than the statistics given in the Lancet study. The New England Journal of Medicine article says that the Lancet’s study’s high figures may have arisen from what the Brownsteins call “main street bias,” or an “oversampling of highly trafficked areas.”
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
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 it finds questionable. The author 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 the 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, the author points to a lack of transparency in the data and the political leanings of the chief backers of the report.
Source: Red Maryland
Reference Material: The Lancet; 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
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