http://www.TheGrace.com

http://www.TheGrace.net

http://www.TheGrace.org
سلام لكم في محبة الله.نتأمل زياراتكم الكريمة لموقع النعمة موقع مجلة النعمة يقدم كلمة الله الكتاب المقدس الإنجيل رسالة السيد يسوع المسيح قراءات مختارة مواضيع مصيرية قصص واقعية شهادات شخصية ترانيم ممتازة ردود مؤكدة كتب بنّاءة رسوم تسالي تأملات يوميات
Bible Read search in Arabic Studys Stories Testimonies Acappella Hymns and Poems Answers Books Links Daily devotions Acappella Music Graphics /Alnemat Journal Arabe Chrétien La Grâce la Revue Arabe sur Internet offre La Sainte Bible Al-Injil L’Evangile de Jésus Christ gratuit, Bienvenue a La Grâce.

I agree with the content of your entire last post, but for the last comment – that this is irrelevant to civilian casualties. We both agree that hitting a target is good, and smart weapons do a good job of this, and this probably helps reduce civilian casualties. The question is how does one identify that a potential target is a good one to hit? How precisely does a pilot travelling at signifigant speed distinguish between an insurgent and a civilian?

Of course not, since it isn’t. The mid-point of a confidence interval is not obtained by averaging the two end-points. Cog, since you speak of the real world, you must know that real-world statisticians calculate the CI from the estimate, not the other way round. Pretending otherwise is just dragging down the level of the debate, which is about whether a paper is up to scratch or whether it is “a lie in a lab coat” as our host claims, but fails to demonstrate.

If all you are saying is that the press reported it badly all I can say is, what else is new?

Really? The first mainstream news source or Arab news source I saw reference the 8000 figure was the last article in Slate, when they mentioned this was an average.

I guarantee you this was not reported as such by the Arab media en masse. And while many in the MSM now consider this study discredited, thankfully, there are still a few hangers on.

“So far as the merits of the study itself are concerned it is beside the point.”

Yes, completely beside the point. In a study of excess deaths, a study used by terrorists to recruit and finance attacks which lead to excess civilian deaths is beside the point. The “proven” 100,000 figure has shown several dozen of times on Al Jazeera, and twice on terrorist videos that I have watched. It has also been reported incessantly in Turkey, almost as a mantra against the US forces.

And the authors of this study have made it clear that this study is an average of 8,000 and 194,000? Time to enter the real world.

Is this based on actual data or is it blind, indecent political propaganda?

The 98,000 excess deaths figure is conservative in the sense that it excludes Fallujah and the authors do not mischaracterise their results by saying so. It is true that many reports of the Lancet study were misleading, but that goes both ways. Some presented 100,000 as a minimum figure, others suggested 8,000 was equally likely – both claims are false.

So far as the merits of the study itself are concerned it is beside the point.

Is it me, or are the “conservative assumptions” of 100,000 excess deaths neither conservative or assumptions as reported several thousand times by the MSM and Arab press?

How many people who reference the 100,000 figure mention it is an average based on sampling? And the authors promoted this mischaracterization by saying their findings were conservative, when they obviously were not.

The sad fact is, this study most assuredly lead to more excess deaths. And if you want to see terrorists mention the Lancet study, visit memritv.org. I am sure they are aware of this study’s limitations, that the number cited was only an average between 8-190,000, and that the results were preliminary.

Oops, that damn sarcasm again.

Sarcasm?

If you reread my comment you will see that I did not call you an idiot. But you seem to jump to conclusions in this area too.

You say the authors have characterised the study dishonestly, then you say their characterisation sounds honest to you. Are there two Cogs debating the issue here?

Sounds like an honest characterization to me. Even if they came forward an corrected the record at this point, this quote by the authors has been played several thousand times by the Arab media.

Which is exactly contrary to how the authors have characterized this study to the media. A fact that you conviently ignore in your laughable defense of this study.

Reason enough to abandon any discussion with dsquared is one visit to his weblog.

http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/

Shannon, on the other hand, has titled posts “Bogus Lancet Study” and “A Lie in A Labcoat”. The “cluster sampling critique” is nothing to do with data quality; it’s a (incorrect) statement that the authors chose a flawed methodology. Nor is this “IFC/EFC” rubbish anything to do with data quality, and it comes wrapped up in a disgusting accusation that the authors intentionally misrepresented their results in order to provide propaganda for fascists.

I don’t, as it happens, have a particularly high threshold for impugning people’s motives; a glance at this thread reveals that I haven’t done it to Heiko, Amac or Mike, and I’ve actually left off arguing with Aaron rather than allow the temperature to rise. I haven’t impugned your motives, either. In general, if you don’t start accusing people of lying, then I’m unlikely to bring it on. If, on the other hand, someone accuses people of “whoring out science”, then their own motives have to be fair game. Nor do I ever give out what I can’t take.

What grounds have you for believing that the Lancet study is based on a data sample “of such poor quality as to be useless no matter how skillfully it is analyzed”?

PS: nice way to lecture me on the right to disagree after calling me an idiot!

I call dishonesty when I see it, without any mean spirit. Quite the contrary, to call on a dishonest argument actually makes me feel happy.
Dishonesty is to keep throwing the same arguments (in a mean spirited way, you would say) without any acknowledgement of the the very strong criticism your arguments received, even when you definitely know they exist. That is dishonest.
Dishonesty is going around the forum on comments to your own article and choosing to answer only the easy stuff, once again ignoring the people that expose the weakness of your argument.
Dishonesty is repeating over and over and over your partisan criticism of the Lancet study claiming to be fool-proof but not to have the guts to send your paper to a peer-review journal, probably to avoid, once again, the exposing of your weak argument.

I don’t know Shannon Love. I have nothing to say about her other that she advances dishonest arguments. But I did suggest the unsupported idea that her only goal is to feed the underlings some talking points. That I regret, even when I have the feeling you can only prove me right.

3. After considerable discussion in the comments threads on the various Lancet posts, we reached a point at which everyone left in the debate had understood point 2 above.

That’s your interpretation. My interpretation is that most of the people debating you gave up because it was obvious that, no matter what they argued, you would defend the Lancet study’s methodology and that you have a low threshold for impugning their motives. It’s as though you believed you could win the argument by attrition.

By emphasizing analytical arcana you have avoided the central issue, which is data quality. Will you agree that it’s possible for a data sample to be of such poor quality as to be useless no matter how skillfully it is analyzed? I submit (again) that the Lancet study is either clearly based on such a sample or that there is substantial justified uncertainty about whether the sample is adequate for the uses to which it is being put.

So why the vehement defense of what is at best marginal-quality data? Why not accept that the study is inconclusive and should be redone? Conditions in Iraq are gradually improving, so it should become easier with time to do high-quality surveys.