Deadly data in the transit lounge

“…because he’d been using some of the IBC data in support of a power law hypothesis about the scaling of violent deaths. ”

That’d have been an interesting paper, because he would have had[1] to deal with the reporting problem/filter[2] of the IBC.

Barry

[1] If he were honest. Not *accusing* him of anything, just saying ‘if..’.

[2] Anybody who doesn’t know what I mean should really STFU and read the Lancet paper.

I have seen little about what exactly will be in Dr. Lafta’s presentation. Does anyone know? My educated guess is that he is presenting some connections between the use of depleted uranium munitions and high rates of childhood cancers within those war zones. Since he was a Baath party member, it makes sense that he would have medical records back into the 90s following the first Gulf War when these muntions were first put into practice.

The denial of a visa also makes sense, in light of the U.S. government’s consistent rejection of the high correlation between U238 munitions and childhood cancer.

Any Thoughts?

Now your B is obviously a joke, given that he could email s-mime/sftp/tor/fax/fed-ex a dvd/etc etc the data to the UK and then video conference for whatever requires his personal apperances.

not necessarily at all – he might have a load of Iraqi medical records which needed to be tabulated and entered into a database, which might be difficult to achieve in Iraq at present as there is a war on.

I suppose it’s stupid, at this late date, to be shocked or appalled by something like this. But am I wrong to think that things used to be different, not so very long ago?

am I wrong to think that things used to be different, not so very long ago?

Well, main street isn’t main street anymore.

If they are on CDs they could really be a load

I’d say that general bastardy towards ones opponents is a more obvious explanation – there have been plenty of stories of academics who have been involved in anti-war activities somehow finding their way onto no-fly lists.

I don’t imagine it’s anything to do with hampering their work, it’s just pettiness and/or revenge, which is, if anything, a more unpleasant motive.

Option (c) – the UK government didn’t like what he said and are making him pay for it, in whatever petty way they can manage.

Presumably the UK and US authorities have reasoned that Dr Lafta is an ex Ba’ath Party member

I think you’re under- and over-estimating the scariness of what’s happened here.

My theory is that there was no reasoning going on at all: Lafta’s on a list of ex-Ba’athists shared between the two countries, and was refused visas by the authorities simply because his name matches.

If there was any thought in to the process at all, it was probably only some poor underpaid, overworked Government clerk “checking” the results of what the computer spits out.

… which (if correct) is less scary in some senses – there’s not an organised over-the-top crazed plot in high places to stop him Speaking The Dark Truth About Depleted Uranium – but more scary in others – important, life-affecting decisions are made at scale using a stupid and broken system, with the obvious and predictable results, only some of which turn out to be newsworthy.

This thread is like a Rorschach test or perhaps more of litmus test for gullability. (Did you hear that Bush eats veal and starves spider monkeys while Cheney takes bets on which one dies first?)

People, while Thinking Of The Children, remember Occam’s razor.

Daniel writes:

I’d note that there isn’t an election on in the USA at present, so the denialist crowd can shove that little slur up their backsides this time too.

And why is that a “slur?” Roberts admits that the publication of Lancet I were timed with regard to the 2004 election.

What went wrong this time? Perhaps the rush by researchers and The Lancet to put the study in front of American voters before the election accomplished precisely the opposite result, drowning out a valuable study in the clamor of the presidential campaign.

“On the 25th of September my focus was about how to get out of the country,” he [Roberts] recalls. “My second focus was to get this information out before the U.S. election.” In little more than 30 days, the paper was published in The Lancet.

Mr. Roberts and his colleagues now believe that the speedy publication of that data created much of the public skepticism toward the study. He sent the manuscript to the medical journal on October 1, requesting that it be published that month. Mr. Roberts says the editors agreed to do so without asking him why.

Love that last bit. I am sure that the editors of the Lancet never ask “Why?” when an author asks for super-fast turn-around times.

Mr. Roberts insists that his primary motive for rushing the paper to press was not political. He says he is glad the paper appeared before the election because he was concerned for his Iraqi colleagues’ safety. Had the paper come out after the election, he argues, it would have looked like a cover-up. Dr. Lafta, he says, “would have been killed — there is just no doubt.” Dr. Lafta, in an e-mail message to The Chronicle, disagrees: “My personal opinion is that this was an unjustified fear.” Mr. Roberts acknowledges that he also hoped to ignite a policy change or public response. “This was going to do more good in terms of changing policy if it came out in October than if it came out in November,” he says. “But we never had any delusions that this might affect the U.S. election.”

Anyway, the best case scenario is that the publication was timed to influence the US election by forcing candidates and voters to grapple with this important topic. The alternative is that it was rushed to publication because Roberts thought, perhaps naively, that it would increase Kerry’s chances.

In either case, there is no doubt that the publication was timed with regard to the US election.

So, why does Daniel accuse we “denialists” of using this “slur?” Facts are stubborn things.

Oh bi, you are so clever. Obviously there can be no legitimate reason, him being a mid ranking official in the Saddam Husien administration, many of which are actively trying to kill US soldiers right now.

In a country that won’t take US citizens off a no fly list, even after they are cleared, I’m sure it is easy to get special clearance for Iraqis on the “A lot of them are fighting US soldiers” list.

Silly me, carrying Republican water when I thought I was just being reasonable.

Dsquared: the link still don’t work.

Just read Kevin’s link. It doesn’t, of course, show that the Lancet numbers are right, but it does show that Spagat isn’t a critic whose honesty can be taken for granted.

In other news, Megan McArdle gets things assways again. Commenting on Daniel’s remark that “I can quite easily see how a load of detailed gruntwork with medical records might have to be done by the non-Iraqi authors or not done at all”, she says:

“…while I’m no scientist, my impression is that things like tabulating the basic data to test your hypothesis is usually done a leetle bit earlier than the night before your conference presenting the results. Since [dsquared’s] general schtick involves accusing me of not understanding scientific and statistical procedure, forgive me if I chortle.”

Evidently she thinks Lafta was going to present the results of the work on cancer in Vancouver.