Say Anything Blog

Recently a study made on the number of civilian casualties in Iraq has been getting a lot of attention in the press, mostly because it suggests that 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of that country. I previously posted my skepticism as to this study here and here.

And now, here's yet another reason to be skeptical of the study (via Wizbang).

Slate - The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference--the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period--signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more fully:

We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.

Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English--which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language--98,000--is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

Indeed.

One has to assume that the media has people working for it who are more familiar with these type of studies than the average layman. With that assumption in mind, how sad is it that the media has chosen once again to report on only the part of the story that furthers their political agenda?