Your lipstick's smeared. :yep:

Just out of interest why is the Lancet is poking it's nose in a civil war? :hmm:

Must be a slow month on the medical news front. ;)

May be the figures are not that far off, if this goes on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=...&v=na0IxaMmatA

their statistics exclusively base on kills being reported in public media. Means: they are not accurate, too, and necessarily must be assumed to be much higher. Or do you think every kill throughout Iraq has a reporter counting it?

Yes. Almost as silly as taking a sampling of death certificates and projecting it onto the entire population as opposed to doing the research and counting all the death certificates in the population.

Iraqbodycount does no projections, it only reads newspapers and makes scratches on a list. the mehod only works if newspapers cover ALL deaths there are, and iraqbodycounts reads ALL newspapers, and filter out double messages.

Projections are needed to come even close to the real value. That's what usually is done in zones of natural desaster, war, etc, as well as domestic polls, consumer predictions and election predictions as well. To define statistical criterions for how a sample should be defined to be representative for the total population, weighing these samples to compensate for local differences, and then doing a projection on that basis, is common practice, really. the better part of all statistcial methods being used in science are basing on probabilities, and representaive sampling instead of totalling complete populations. It's the second best thing to doing the research and collecting all certificates there are. If you are in a country where that kind of research is not possible, since there is war and chaos and violence, some areas are no-go zones, administrative structures are partially broken, partially corrupt or incompetent - what do you do then? the second best thing, I think.

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In fact, the Iraq Body Count group themselves have responded to the Lancet study: Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates.

I find the last sentence of that press release somewhat interesting.

Another article: 655,000 War Dead? A bogus study on Iraq casualties.

IMHO - US troops should just go home, they got Saddam, they wasted his sons. They did the deed. They are not going to change Iraq to how they want it. For americans sake they should call it a day & let iraq take care of their problems. Save USA mothers the agony of losing their sons.

Nice post AL. :up:

I think your fun with numbers comment was spot on.

"And so, while the gender and the age of the deceased were recorded in the 2006 Johns Hopkins study, nobody, according to Dr. Roberts, recorded demographic information for the living survey respondents. This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents. But don't take my word for it--try using Google to find a survey that does not ask demographic questions.

Without demographic information to assure a representative sample, there is no way anyone can prove--or disprove--that the Johns Hopkins estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths is accurate"


You don't have to verify the data. Trust us;)

Iraq Body Count: whos telling the truth ?
 

The number of civilians reported to have been killed during the Iraq war and subsequent military presence is being recorded by the campaign group Iraq Body Count.

On 15 September 2006 it put the total number of reported civilian dead at 40,775 to 45,559 and the number of police dead at 2,437.

The issue of counting the number of Iraqis killed since the US-led invasion is highly controversial and the figure is disputed.
The US and UK military authorities do not record the number of civilians killed by their forces. The security situation and administrative chaos also make counting extremely difficult.


So where does 600,000 come from? If No one else but this group are actually counting?


Sounds to me the 600,000 figure, is some what like the Threat of "WMDs". Just waffle with no substance of proof.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4525412.stm

Also see the many arguments pro and contra on page 1.

Well if they could put the legs, arms and head back on the body, I think the count would be more accurate. :know:

Of if like Hezbollah they'd stop counting corpses 5 times...