Saturday, March 19, 2005
Freedom from Quant
Instapundit, via That Liberal Media, is hosting an informative debate over the debunking of the Lancet claim that the war in Iraq has killed over 100,000 civilians.
He also links to a Slate article in which Fred Kaplan has very approving things to say about Iraq Body Count.
My take, longtime readers will recall, is that Iraq Body Count lies about its own methodology.
Glenn Reynolds will generate a lot of traffic to the IBC site, which does have certain limited use. But I want my criticism of IBC.net entered into the public discussion.
Iraq Body Count's numbers still seem somewhat inflated to me, although it's true that there will have been a good deal of undocumented deaths by now in areas of heavy fighting, such as Fallujah.
There will have been an even larger number of guerillas killed in action by coalition forces whose family members are swearing up and down are innocent.
And who are lying through their teeth.
The Lancet numbers, estimating 100,000 odd Iraqi dead (while assuming, for reasons I can't imagine, a roughly symmetrical bell curve distribution) are absurdly high. Laughably high. For the study to be true, it would have to have assumed that the average coalition serviceman killed around 0.5 to 0.7 Iraqi civilians or so during OIF I, depending on how you weight the participants of OIF II.
Which, given an 6-to-1 teeth-to-tail ratio (it takes approximately 6 support troops to maintain one combat arms soldier in the field) means that the AVERAGE combat soldier would have had to have killed between 3 and 3.5 civilians.
My Battalion was in contact almost every day in a pretty busy city, with about 400 combat arms troops, plus support. Believe me, we sure as Hell didn't kill 1200 Iraqi civilians over there.
In order to keep up with Lancet's average score, we would have had to 100 Iraqis per month. Or more than three Iraqis per day.
As Bill Cosby would say:
"RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHT."
The Lancet survey fail every test of common sense. It would have been the laugh line of the month around my unit. And as is being made increasingly clear, fail test after test of statistical methodology.*
Splash, out
Jason
* Why on earth would any hack statmonger want to deliberate exclude the most violent area of Iraq when trying to calculate, well, the level of violence in Iraq? I mean, that's like trying to explain stock market behavior in 1998-2002 while excluding the Nasdaq. Explaining Babe Ruth's slugging percentage while excluding his home runs.
He also links to a Slate article in which Fred Kaplan has very approving things to say about Iraq Body Count.
My take, longtime readers will recall, is that Iraq Body Count lies about its own methodology.
Glenn Reynolds will generate a lot of traffic to the IBC site, which does have certain limited use. But I want my criticism of IBC.net entered into the public discussion.
Iraq Body Count's numbers still seem somewhat inflated to me, although it's true that there will have been a good deal of undocumented deaths by now in areas of heavy fighting, such as Fallujah.
There will have been an even larger number of guerillas killed in action by coalition forces whose family members are swearing up and down are innocent.
And who are lying through their teeth.
The Lancet numbers, estimating 100,000 odd Iraqi dead (while assuming, for reasons I can't imagine, a roughly symmetrical bell curve distribution) are absurdly high. Laughably high. For the study to be true, it would have to have assumed that the average coalition serviceman killed around 0.5 to 0.7 Iraqi civilians or so during OIF I, depending on how you weight the participants of OIF II.
Which, given an 6-to-1 teeth-to-tail ratio (it takes approximately 6 support troops to maintain one combat arms soldier in the field) means that the AVERAGE combat soldier would have had to have killed between 3 and 3.5 civilians.
My Battalion was in contact almost every day in a pretty busy city, with about 400 combat arms troops, plus support. Believe me, we sure as Hell didn't kill 1200 Iraqi civilians over there.
In order to keep up with Lancet's average score, we would have had to 100 Iraqis per month. Or more than three Iraqis per day.
As Bill Cosby would say:
"RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHT."
The Lancet survey fail every test of common sense. It would have been the laugh line of the month around my unit. And as is being made increasingly clear, fail test after test of statistical methodology.*
Splash, out
Jason
* Why on earth would any hack statmonger want to deliberate exclude the most violent area of Iraq when trying to calculate, well, the level of violence in Iraq? I mean, that's like trying to explain stock market behavior in 1998-2002 while excluding the Nasdaq. Explaining Babe Ruth's slugging percentage while excluding his home runs.
Comments:
Hey Jason,
They have updated their website to say that they include indirect causes. I don't consider this lying. Just inaccurate. It would be more fair of them to list who killed the civilians. I'm very sure more have been killed by the terrorists than by US Military. They include even results of starvation and water impurity which is very subjective given that Saddam hid food and water from his people at times.
Love your website.
Pfc. Yamauchi
Camp Mobile, Korea
They have updated their website to say that they include indirect causes. I don't consider this lying. Just inaccurate. It would be more fair of them to list who killed the civilians. I'm very sure more have been killed by the terrorists than by US Military. They include even results of starvation and water impurity which is very subjective given that Saddam hid food and water from his people at times.
Love your website.
Pfc. Yamauchi
Camp Mobile, Korea
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