LancetIraq
Category archives for LancetIraq
Lancet post number 200
Posted by Tim Lambert on October 25, 2010 The WikiLeaks Iraq archive, while incomplete, reveals many more previously unreported violent deaths in the Iraq war — Iraq Body Count say that the archive reveals 15,000 people shot, blown up, had the heads cut off or killed in some other way that they had not recorded. So Tim Blair, who claimed that the Iraq…
More on surveys of violent war deaths
Posted by Tim Lambert on December 29, 2009 Andrew Mack emails me to draw attention to his paper (“Estimating War Deaths: An Arena of Contestation” by Spagat, Mack, Cooper and Kreutz), which criticizes Obermeyer et al’s paper Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia. I commented on Obermeyer et al in this post. I agree with some of their criticism.…
Lancet correction published
Posted by Tim Lambert on March 6, 2009 As promised, the Lancet has published a correction to the 2nd Lancet study: Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, Roberts L. Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey. Lancet 2006; 368: 1421–28–The Methods section of this Article (Oct 21, 2006) stated that “Participants were assured that no unique identifiers would…
Journal of Peace Research publishes badly flawed paper, part 3
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 26, 2009 This post contains some more notes on a reply to the badly flawed “Main Street Bias” paper. In my previous post I showed that the MSB papers was wrong to claim that it was plausible that the unsampled regions was 10 times as large as the sampled region. In this post I look at their…
Johns Hopkins completes review of Lancet study
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 23, 2009 The Johns Hopkins press release states: Data Collection An examination was conducted of all the original data collection forms, numbering over 1,800 forms, which included review by a translator. The original forms have the appearance of authenticity in variation of handwriting, language and manner of completion. The information contained on the forms was validated against…
Journal of Peace Research publishes badly flawed paper, part 2
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 19, 2009 This post is some more notes on a reply to the badly flawed “Main Street Bias” paper. The authors claim that it is plausible that the Lancet paper’s sampling scheme could have missed 91% of the houses in Iraq. (That is, their parameter n, the number of households in the unsampled area divided by the…
New Scientist on AAPOR censure
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 6, 2009 Debora Mackenzie, in the New Scientist reports on the AAPOR censure: AAPOR charges that by refusing “to answer even basic questions” about data and methods, Burnham is preventing other researchers from evaluating his conclusions. According to New Scientist’s investigation, however, Burnham has sent his data and methods to other researchers, who found it sufficient. A…
Journal of Peace Research publishes badly flawed paper
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 6, 2009 Unfortunately, the Journal of Peace Research has published the badly flawed “Main Street Bias” paper. My earlier criticisms still apply, so I’m reposting them. Consider this the first draft of a reply to their paper. The authors argue that main street bias could reasonably produce a factor of 3 difference. How did they get such…
Reaction to the AAPOR press release
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 5, 2009 I asked Mary Losch (chair of AAPOR’s Standards Committee) to comment on my previous post I have read your entry and would note that the links you provided did not supply the questionnaire items but rather a simple template (as noted in the heading). The Johns Hopkins report provides only superficial information about methods and…
AAPOR alleges Gilbert Burnham violated AAPOR’s code
Posted by Tim Lambert on February 4, 2009 The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has put out a press release alleging that Gilbert Burnham (who is not a member of the AAPOR) violated the AAPOR’s code of ethics. What did he do? Their press release states: Mary E. Losch, chair of AAPOR’s Standards Committee, noted that AAPOR’s investigation of Burnham began…