BTW, I’m moderately sure you know this but not all CrookedTimberites might: the “under-15” vs. “under-5” grouping is probably less the problem than the 1990’s vs. 2002+ problem. That’s because there are very distinct age patterns in child mortality (at least, for non-violent causes): most deaths under age 15 are concentrated under age 5; likewise, most deaths under age 5 are concentrated under age 1. Of course, when you want to be exact you have to be exceedingly painstakingly anal-retentively exact but the bottom line is that “child” death rates, no matter how you define “children”, are in roughly the same ballpark.

But Daniel’s version is misleading. [...]The critics’ rely on the fact that, as a matter of logic, if there are X deaths of kids under 15, there must be less than X deaths of kids under 5. The Lancet study has 36 under-15 deaths per 1000 births, and another pre-war study has 100 or so under-5 deaths per 1000 births. If follows that the Lancet study found an under-5 death rate less than 1/3 of the pre-war study. This is exactly what the Times article says, and Daniel obscures.

Hmmm. I read the original version written by von Schreeb, Rosling, and Garfield, and I don’t think Daniel’s version is unfaithful. The comparison that vS-R-G made were with an estimate of under 5 mortality from the 1990’s to the Burnham study’s under 15 mortality from 2002 onward.

Daniel, without telling the reader, is implicitly assuming that the birth rate remained constant (which hardly seems consistent with the drastic increase in violence).

Perhaps, but we do have the CBR from the 2004 Roberts study. The pre- and post-invasion CBR’s for the 14 months pre-invasion vs. the 18 months post-invasion were almost the same (29.8 vs. 31.7). The birth rate would have had to have dropped quite a bit in the two years between the 2004 and 2006 studies in order for there to be a substantial drop in the overall post-invasion CBR. I agree that’s possible, but presuming that the CBR’s are roughly unchanged isn’t so crazy as one might think.

WTF? Is your browser defective, Ragout?

Burnham et al write that “the deaths that were not confirmed by a certificate were too few to do any meaningful trend analysis.” But two sentences later, they do exactly the sort of trend anlysis that their critics urged! “In the 2004 data (but not in the 2006 data), the period most associated with no death certificates was the weeks following the invasion, and this period constituted a smaller fraction of all deaths in the second study.”

Unbelievable.

But Daniel’s version is misleading. The critics were not quoting mortality rates as such, which would be deaths of the under-15 per kid under-15. If the critics had really compared under-15 mortality to under-5 mortality, as Daniel says, the critics would indeed be foolish.

But since the critics are prominent scientists, they certainly did not do anything so foolish. Instead, they compared under-15 deaths per birth in the Lancet study to under-5 deaths per birth in another study. The critics’ rely on the fact that, as a matter of logic, if there are X deaths of kids under 15, there must be less than X deaths of kids under 5.

The Lancet study has 36 under-15 deaths per 1000 births, and another pre-war study has 100 or so under-5 deaths per 1000 births. If follows that the Lancet study found an under-5 death rate less than 1/3 of the pre-war study. This is exactly what the Times article says, and Daniel obscures.

Second, Daniel claims that “infant mortality remained constant in the [Lancet] survey.” But as far as I can see there is no data in the paper to calculate pre and post war infant mortality. The paper just reports total births, not pre and post war births. Daniel, without telling the reader, is implicitly assuming that the birth rate remained constant (which hardly seems consistent with the drastic increase in violence).

Finally, Daniel says that Garfield is a “hack.” Since Garfield was an author of the first Lancet Iraq study, I guess that study was co-authored by a “hack” too?

I’m not following the thread, so I don’t know if any of you has already made this point, but obviously one of the reasons is that hardly anyone – either anti-war or pro-war – cares much about Iraqi casualties. One cockroach in a veterans’ hospital in the US is more newsworthy (and useful for the anti-war cause) than a thousand Iraqi deaths. That’s just how it is in this world.

Mr Mandani’s argument relies, as I mentioned elsewhere, on his claim that:

The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms.

If we’re going to take this argument seriously – and a couple of other commenters in this thread have referred to the article in positive terms – then could someone possibly provide some evidence (which Mr Mandani doesn’t) that most of the killers in Iraq are (Shias, presumably) closely linked to the Iraqi military?

Much of what you are saying is very meta, and I your Danish world seems to be different than the American world. Wondering why the Humvee clip isn’t used more strikes me as REALLY getting lost in the weeds. It was widely circulated here, but apparently not widely enough for you. It strikes me as typical occupation-Army behavior

One thing you might not understand is that what the pro-war faction in the US thinks seeing that is mostly “Looks like fun! Too bad we don’t see them blowing people away!” People who don’t think that way already are almost all anti-war.

By now I suspect that you’re mostly a time-waster who likes being lost in the weeds. If your question is “Why doesn’t the left use the Lancet study as propaganda?” it’s about as I’ve said—it’s too technical for most people to understand precisely, and it’s been disabled by an effective smear campaign. If your question is “Doesn’t the Left’s failure to use the Lancet study as propaganda amount to an acknowledgement that it’s defective?”, my answer is no. I suspect that it’s an excellent study, but it’s useless as propaganda for reasons stated at lenghth. If your question is “Why are you not interested in whether or not the Lancet study is accurate or not?” my answer is a.) I have only a weak understanding of epidemiology and statistics, b.) I suspect that the controversy is 90%+ fake, and c.) in practice, I don’t need the Lancet study to make up my own mind or convince other people. In the aftermath I expect the study to be vindicated, but by that time it will be a footnote in history. I give the authors credit for effort, but fault them for naivite about the toxic American political process, which is the only one that’s really important (for reasons I stated above).

Nell/John – I don’t think I implied it was our “primary task”, I just said it was important. Anyway, I feel like I have been repeating myself. Having a credible, broadly accurate estimate of the total number of deaths due to the war just seems an obviously valuable goal to me, whether now or in the future, so we will just have to agree to disagree on this.

I will admit to misrepresenting you insofar as you also said upthread that the study was actively suppressed in the debate (rather than just, seemingly by a curiously passive choice on the part of the left).

viz: To me there’s no mystery about the failure to use the Lancet figure. it’s the same reason that unfavorable news about Israeli behavior gets less play than unfavorable news about Palestinian behavior. Stinking the opposition out is a standard tactic here in the USA; a lot of people just don’t want to get involved in that.

This I don’t understand:

For you, apparently anyone whose primary interest is in the present policy debate is an ideologue, a left ideologue in my case, and you feel some sort of superiority to such people.

What, pray tell, in what I have written signifies that I regard you as an ideologue and that I feel any kind of superiority to you?

I certainly do look differently at the Lancet study than you and I can’t grasp your studied and blasé indifference to it, but that is a different kettle of ballgames.

The Humvee thing just strikes me as a powerful image, easily made to symbolise everything that is wrong with the US in Iraq.

When I first saw it, I expected it to be picked up promptly by the media, anti-war and anti-Bush people and to make the rounds in a big way, but it hasn’t happened. My powers of prognostication in such matters obviously suck.

In an honest debate the Lancet study would be a valuable though hardly necessary contribution to the argument. However, an honest debate is not taking place in the US, where the decision is being made, and there’s no particular point regretting that fact at length. The Lancet piece is not necessary for reasonable people to make up their minds about the Iraq War, and there are few reasonable people still making up their minds for whom the Lancet study will be decisive.

I think that in the aftermath of the war the Lancet study will be vindicated and most of its critics will look like ill-intentioned fools, but I’m not going to try to prove that at the moment. It may be that some valid points have been made mixed in with the drivel, but rather than try to sort things out I’ll just move forward and leave the Lancet study where it sits. At the moment I think that it was sabotaged by the monomaniac hacks characteristic of the Anglosphere’s pro-war faction, but since the Lancet study wasn’t part of my own decision-making process I don’t need to defend it.

For you, apparently anyone whose primary interest is in the present policy debate is an ideologue, a left ideologue in my case, and you feel some sort of superiority to such people. I’m willing to let you continue to enjoy your little Stostosocentric, Danocentric buzz.

I don’t know what point I was supposed to get from the Humvee clip, which I saw quite some time ago. It certainly wasn’t ignored—I saw it posted or linked on several different sites.