The Truth Is Out There

Yesterday we looked at Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman and his apparent lack of awareness that this year's Lancet attack on the Iraq War via a death-count study has been derided by many sources, from left to right, none of which has been cited by his paper. That includes the main story by David Brown and all subsequent references. The Post also hasn't informed its readers of the, um, outlook of the study's authors or Lancet editor Richard Horton.

I quoted some of this gang's classic anti-imperialistic rhetoric yesterday, but didn't have time to cite a column by co-author Les Roberts posted last October at the American Friends Service Committee website, 100,000 Deaths In Iraq: A Year Later. Roberts recounts his work on the 2004 study and adds:

Unfortunately, the report was released just a week before the US Presidential election.

I propose he didn't say this out of regret for having unduly influenced voters, despite Weisman's confidence, as expressed in the live-chat yesterday, that the authors did not release their study to be part of the political season... Roberts continues:

With a year of hindsight, I am primarily struck with how profoundly I did not understand my own society. I think among my most disturbing revelations:

I thought the press saw their job as reporting information. Most of the pieces discussing our report were written to control or influence society, not to relay what our report had documented....

Roberts unsuccessfully campaigned to be the Democratic nominee for the 24th congressional district in upstate New York. Not that the Post told anyone. Perhaps mind-control musings help explain why he wasn't well received by upstate voters.

Back to the column:

I thought the public would be the most compassionate audience to reach with self-critical news. 

It seemed that public outrage, over the war in Vietnam, over prisoner abuse, was most often the driving force for change when our foreign actions do not correspond to our collective will. Unfortunately, this process depends on the media passing the facts on to the public....

Damn media. Damn public. I know the feeling. Roberts actually credits some U.S. military with having more compassion (i.e. properly reacting to his study) before returning to scrupulously not being interested in affecting the outcome of elections:

At this point it seems to me that concerned citizens who are outraged by Iraq need to focus on fixing what is broken in our society. That way, the next time something as misguided as invading Iraq arises, there can be a healthy debate in advance, and in the early stages, not after 3 years and 2000+ Coalition troop deaths and tens of thousands of innocent civilian deaths.

Thank goodness the Post didn't cloud my vision about the impartiality of these apolitical scientists.

By the way, there's a bonus in the comments section I've not seen elsewhere: Slate's Fred Kaplan, a harsh critic of the study, showed up:

I usually don't get involved in these things, but I can't let this pass. Why am I not so surprised (as he might put it) that Les Roberts has not done the slightest bit of research into who I am or what I think. I am not, not have I ever been, a military employee; the people involved in this war are not my colleagues; as he might know if he'd read any of my twice-a-week columns in Slate, he would know that I have been a persistent and outspoken critic of the Iraq war. Not everyone in this debate gears his analysis to the conclusions that he'd like to reach.
--Fred Kaplan, Slate

Meanwhile, for the Science-Based Evidence Community, political consultant and Iraq researcher Stephen Moore writes in WSJ's Opinion Journal and finds multiple errors in the way the research was conducted:

After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins University claims that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in Iraq by anyone's measure; some of them have been friends of mine. But the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country. Survey results frequently have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5%--not 1200%.

The group--associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health--employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries....

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points....

That's just a taste. Moore questioned Roberts. The results are... illuminating.

Note: The photo is taken from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) website.