Assuming they do, confirming that deaths reported in the paper are real does not mean that deaths not reported in the papers aren’t real also.
I think its a safe assumption that civilians killed directly are generally reported somewhere. In addition, there is another factor…insurgents killed and tagged as ‘civilian’ deaths. So, I’d guess that roughly it works out. Obviously IBC and other organizations that trust their methodology think so. We aren’t exactly talking about right wingers here either…and IBC is one of the more respected statistical sites.
-XT
It is also a safe assumption that civilians killed indirectly far outnumber the former, and that their deaths are far less likely to be reported in the media.
Certainly BG…especially if we take ‘indirectly’ to very broad limits. This has always been the case of course. My problem with Lancet is not so much that I doubt their findings…its that people are attempting to use the results in a political way, and in effect are measuring things using different yardsticks. If we want to go back and re-evaluate past wars using this new yard stick, then thats fine…it will keep things in perspective. 600,000 civilian deaths in Iraq instead of 60,000 directly killed compared to 300 million Russian deaths…instead of 30 million. 10 million civilian deaths in Vietnam, instead of 1 million. Roughly of course.
Of course, the reason Lancet is used in these discussions and widely by the anti-war folks is because there is a shell game going on with how things are measured and compared…and because most people don’t look deeply at what exactly the Lancet study MEANS, what its really SAYING…or why there is such a disparity between Lancet and, say, IBC. I was really playing devils advocate earlier in the thread…and got the response I was looking for from Der Trihs…instead of looking deeply at WHY there is a difference, he spouted off his conjecture that there is a conspiracy by IBC (or perhaps the sources IBC uses) to keep the numbers low, while Lancet is a shinning example of someone boldly telling it like it is. The correct answer of course is…they are both right (well, roughly). To go back to what I said in my first post (I was being flip…I’m sort of in a mood these days and don’t go for these monster posts like I used too 
)…its all about how you are spinning the data and what assumptions you are using. ALL statistics is about those two things in the end.
-XT
Why are past wars the appropriate yardstick here? And why is it inappropriate for people to use the facts here for political purposes? It would be inappropriate not to.
Given that the total population of the USSR in 1939 was ~190 million, and that some of them were still alive at the end of the war, this seems rather unlikely.
Because most people are at least passingly familiar with the death tolls of past wars, and naturally compare them to the current lash up in Iraq. Its human nature.
Why do you think that Iraq should or could be viewed in a vacuume.
Well, you are getting into deep waters here. Why is it inappropriate for a politician to spin the facts one way to make his/her case look better? Beats me…IS it inappropriate? I’d say yes, you might say no. What I dislike (which has no bearing on appropriate/inappropriate) is the deception implicit in using this data in the way its being used. The way its being used IMHO anyway. YMMV…and most probably does, along with most of the other posters in this thread no doubt.
To deceive through statistical slight of hand? Well, I suppose so. What are your feelings on the deception Bush et al did to get us into Iraq in the first place? What are your feelings about those who condone that deception for the greater good (as they see it)?
Good point. Ok, let me ask you something…do you feel that the death tolls used for civilian casualties in Russia during WWII are accurate wrt the standard used in the Lancet report? Why or why not?
-XT
Have you actually looked through the site. Their FAQ admits
Also, given the uncertainties of the war, the very small difference between the upper and lower bound seesm suspicious. I think it is fine for the methodology they use, but not for the real casualty figures. Note the Lancet bounds were much wider.
The 2006 number they give, though larger than the official Iraqi number, is smaller than the UN number in the cite I gave.
I absolutely think they’re legitimate - you’re just overinterpreting their numbers.
sigh If the methodology used in the Lancet report was to multiply the official figures by 10, then I wouldn’t be too thrilled. I’m not aware that any numbers for Russia were derived that way. It wouldn’t work there, since entire families died, so no one would be around to do the report. Maybe if you said what problem you had with the methodology, as opposed to not liking the result?
[QUOTE=xtisme]
(from memory) They also cross check every death certificate to verify deaths they reported.
[quote]
I think your wrong there. IBC certainly don’t mention doing that on their methodolgy site.
The John Hopkins study DID do so. And in the vast majority of cases were able to verify the reported death with a death certificate.
Which would mean that only 10% of deaths are reported in the media (which is all IBC goes on). I really don’t see why that is so unreasonable.
I realize some of the non-violent deaths may fall in the category, but I fail to see how the violent deaths that make up 56% of these figures would. And even the non-violent deaths, remember this is comparison with Iraq at the height of sanctions when unnessacary deaths due to poor health care and lack of medicnes were common place.
Figures like that 30 or 40 million figure certainly DO NOT just include deaths from “bombs and bullets”. In fact my understanding is that they were arrive at with methods not too different from the John Hopkins study (i.e. comparisons of population before and after the war, rather than adding up casualty reports). This is what the wikipedia (if anyone has a more reliables source as to how these figures are arrived at I’d be interested) foot note says about soviet civilian casualties in WW2:
Apologies for the re-post. I screw up tags on the previous one (the admins can delete it if pos., thanks):
I think your wrong there. IBC certainly don’t mention doing that on their methodolgy site.
The John Hopkins study DID do so. And in the vast majority of cases were able to verify the reported death with a death certificate.
Which would mean that only 10% of deaths are reported in the media (which is all IBC goes on). I really don’t see why that is so unreasonable.
I realize some of the non-violent deaths may fall in the category, but I fail to see how the violent deaths that make up 56% of these figures would. And even the non-violent deaths, remember this is comparison with Iraq at the height of sanctions when unnessacary deaths due to poor health care and lack of medicnes were common place.
Figures like that 30 or 40 million figure certainly DO NOT just include deaths from “bombs and bullets”. In fact my understanding is that they were arrive at with methods not too different from the John Hopkins study (i.e. comparisons of population before and after the war, rather than adding up casualty reports). This is what the wikipedia (if anyone has a more reliables source as to how these figures are arrived at I’d be interested) foot note says about soviet civilian casualties in WW2:
As I pointed out in my last post modern Russian WW2 casualty figures (20-30 million) are probably closer to the John Hopkins study than anything else…
But put it another way what do you think our casualty estimates for WW2 would be if we used IBC methods ? (i.e. adding up the reported casualty figures in media reports). You’d certainly say you’d see an under estimate of AT LEAST 90% .
(Not dissing IBC they don’t CLAIM to do anything except add up media reports, and that is certainly better than nothing).
It should also be pointed out that none of the critisims have help up enough to make it into the the Lancet’s “peer reviewing” process of this paper.
Especially when we’re talking about the international media. We’re not talking about the Mosul Herald-News* here.
*I made that name up. But you know what I mean.
IBC make no claim that their figure represents the actual number of dead. In explanatory comments on IBC they write
From here
and
From their Quick-FAQ section here
Also worth pointing out that when asked about the Lancet estimate the Iraqi Minister of Health disputed 655,000 civilian deaths and estimated the true figure was ‘only’ about 150,000:
I did a vanity search and came across this. The person who I died from lack of dialysis was actually a realtive of a colleague, but I could easily come up with dozens of examples. Simply put, much of Iraq is in utter collapse, there isn’t a functioning morgue for lots of Baghdad. I wish I had the descriptive powers to convey how horrible life can be here. It is hell on earth. Not a week goes by and sometimes not a day goes by, where I don’t hear about someone losing a friend or relative not just to violence, but just because they live in a collapsed state. The women who cleans my office lost a nephew from a live downed powerline. He had been standing there talkng to his family not realizing he was touch the thing when all of a sudden the power came back on (it is usually not) and ‘poof’ he’s dead, just like that.
I realize that my personal experiences are just that, but I think Katrina can give you a sense of what life is like. Imagine Katrina all day, every day. Imagine a world in which Katrina just isn’t worth commenting on anymore because it has become the default reality. Last month, we lost five people in five days, try to imagine what that must be like.
The Lancet study was looking at how many were dead because of the war, not just from bombs and bullets but just from the phenomenon of war. Maybe from a distance a kid being electrocuted isn’t the same as a kid being shot, but I have to tell you, when you have an aunt freaking out in your office it sure looks the same.
Exactly. The Lancet study asks the question, “How many more people have died in Iraq than would have died if there had been no war?” Some have said, “that’s not what I think of as war deaths,” but it’s the question this survey set out to answer, and it’s certainly a question one ought to try to answer to measure the effects of the war.
It’s not the ‘wrong’ question any more than the IBC asks the ‘wrong’ question by asking, “how many Iraqi civilian deaths have been reported in the international press?”
If I knew I was responsible for this much carnage, I’d have to blow my brains out to end the pain inside. Bush says he sleeps well at night. Whether or not that’s true, it’s pretty much all I need to know about Bush as an alleged human being.
Sorry to debunk the continuous assertions here that this is non-violent deaths accounting for the disparity. I listened to the Lancet guy interviewed and he was *repeatedly * saying that the vast majority of the excess deaths (90%+) *were * violent - which in his experience was highly unusual for a war. I just went and looked up the exact number myself and specifically the study said that 600K out of 650K were violent. That’s 92%.
I have to say I’m skeptical about the results. That’s half a million missing bodies, and, like **xtisme ** I have a hard time imagining they’re all rotting under rubble undiscovered.
But be that as it may, even if it’s 100,000 it’s an atrocity of horrific proportions, and it’s all blood on our hands.
This reminds me a bit of the Doonesbury cartoon of Phred in Cambodia during the Vietnam war. He says something about the secret bombings, and the peasant he’s talking to asks, “What secret bombings? Everyone here knew about them! Why, I even said to my wife, ‘Look, Martha, here come the bombs.’”
Same thing here. I don’t think the disparity has much to do with piles of bodies under rubble. I expect most of the dead are discovered immediately (e.g. those killed by a bomb blast) or not too long afterwards (e.g. bodies that turn up in morgues, by a roadside, in the river, etc.). But I wonder how many of them are duly reported, but just in ways that aren’t reported abroad, hence aren’t included in the IBC’s count.
An interesting experiment would be to sample interior sources - violent deaths reported in local Iraqi newspapers or noted in death certificates during a particular month - and see how many of them showed up in the IBC’s count.
While there will not be a death certificate or a local newspaper mention of every violent death, one would expect that at least a majority of violent deaths would be recorded in these fashions. Measuring the disparity between either death certificates and deaths reported in the international press, or deaths in the local Iraqi press and deaths reported in the international press, would be one way of getting a handle on the Lancet study’s plausibility.