See other Pious Perverts Articles
Title: BeAChooser Bozo Count at 40 Plus and Counting - A Possible Site Record
Source:
Minerva
URL Source: http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=45820&Disp=409#C409
Published: Feb 19, 2007
Author: Minerva
Post Date: 2007-02-19 21:59:28 by Minerva
Keywords: None
Views: 27903
Comments: 375
Last night I took a guess at Beachy's bozo count. Today he spilled the beans and indicated that the number I guessed, between 40 and 50, was substantially correct. What does this mean? Well .... it means he is a piss poor excuse for excuse for an advocate. Nobody takes him serious. This is probably why Goldi booted him.
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#192. To: leveller, All (#189)
HOLOCAUST DEATH TOTALS OVERESTIMATED, SAYS HITLER DRESDEN FIREBOMBING NOT SO BAD, SAYS ROOSEVELT HIROSHIMA DEATH TOLL OVERBLOWN, SAYS TRUMAN IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS NOT QUITE AS HIGH AS WE'D LIKE, SAYS BUSH Bump. Exquisite, leveller!
Actually, that's Gilbert Burnham, and yes we do know his political affiliation. He's a democRAT too. Burnham gave $900 to Roberts' Congressional run. According to http://www.postwatchblog.com/2006/10/if_you_liked_ou.html, Gil Burnham stated in an interview with The World Today before the study even began that, "we wouldn't go to the effort of doing something like this if we didn't feel that here was a situation that was egregious and, you know, there really needs to be some attention to what we can do to better protect the civilians." In other words, he had already decided on the conclusion. That source goes on to note "The political intent of the paper is also clear from a statement that "Coalition forces have been reported as targeting all men of military age," referring to two newspaper articles, one of them about a single soldier. Apart from bizarrely citing a newspaper article as a source in a supposedly reputable journal, the authors are not only saying that there are "reports"--they are implying that these reports tie the coalition forces to execution-style killings and assassinations. At the end of the article, the authors go on to suggest that the coalition is in violation of the Geneva Conventions without making any references. It is rare to detect political passion in a scientific publication." ********** http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2006/10/science_exit_le.html#more "Just using Occam's Razor here, you can believe either: 1. A small team of researchers, two of which are American Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq, have stated for the record that they wished to influence a US election, who carried out a survey in Iraq only under their own supervision; and a vast conspiracy by Iraqi authorities to hide 500,000 death certificates. 2. That the small team of researchers either deliberately made up data, cooked the methodology to ensure urban areas were overrepresented, calculated their numbers incorrectly, and willingly misled the Lancet peer reviewers and the world public; and have confidence in the thousands of people working for the Iraqi government in morgues and government offices all over the country of Iraq. Occam's Razor says #2. Sorry guys. I'm not into believing the whole "vast government conspiracy conducted by thousands of individuals and miraculously kept secret" type of thing. I'm more into believing the "small group of political partisans conduct a sham of a study to influence world opinion and a US Congressional election". ************** Well, I can't imagine the Iraqis who actually collected the data are democRATS although they (according to Roberts) HATE Americans. But here are the other members of the team, starting with the authors listed in the first JH study (the 100,000 one), in addition to Roberts and Burnham: Riyadh Lafta - He's an Iraqi, therefore unlikely a democRAT. He's the one Roberts relied on to recruit the Iraqi interviewers on the team ... the ones Roberts later said mostly HATE Americans. Given that, I somehow doubt Riyadh likes us either. Richard Garfield - I don't know his political affiliation but in this interview about the first study ( http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=440) he said "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." Isn't he a little surprised to learn they were dying at the rate of 550 a day throughout Iraq and no one noticed? He said "First of all, very few people refused or were unable to take part in the sample, to our surprise most people had death certificates and we were able to confirm most of the deaths we investigated." He's either unfamiliar with his own study or he's being sloppy because only 2 out of 30 households in each cluster were even asked to provide certificates in the first study (they didn't ask the ones they thought were hostile to the US and who might have the most reason to lie). Oh and by the way, Richard Garfield is one of those who advocated infant mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the John Hopkins interviews. So why doesn't he ask Roberts for explanation regarding this disparity? Jamal Khudhairi - You tell me. I can't find anything about him. That goes for the authors listed in the second study (the 655,000 one): Shannon Doocy and Elizabeth Dzeng. But I bet the odds are better than 2 to 1 that all three are liberal leaning. Not only that, many of those who have been quoted praising the studies are also democRATS. For example, Ronald Waldman (an epidemiologist at Columbia University), who was quoted in the WP praising the study, gave $3000 to John Kerry's campaign. He gave another $1000 to Les Roberts' campaign (http://www.thepoliticalpitbull.com/2006/10/report_65500_iraqi_civilians_h.php ). No, I don't and I told you exactly why. My complaints probably have something to do with the influence of Lancet Editor Richard Horton, who wrote the fervent "Commentary" to the article and whose anti-Iraq war views are, if anything, MORE strident than those of Burnham and Roberts. Yes, they have. I wonder if they will come to regret it. **************** Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable By StatGuy Earlier this week, British medical journal The Lancet published a study estimating that, since the US-led invasion in March 2003, almost 655,000 Iraqis have died who would not have died had the invasion not occurred. That estimate is far above previous estimates of post-invasion Iraqi deaths, which generally range between 40,000 and 120,000. Immediately, the study received widespread attention and generated a great deal of controversy in the media, in the halls of government, and around the blogosphere. The article is entitled “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey” by Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts. Drs Burnham, Doocy, and Roberts are affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and Dr Lafta with the Mustansiriya University, Baghdad. The full text is available here in html, and here as a pdf document. (All page references to the study in this post refer to the pdf version.) I put on my professional statistician's hat and had a good long look at the study. In my opinion, it is statistically unsound and unreliable. The study violates the basic principle of good statistical practice by relying on a non-random sample survey. Also, the article's description of survey operations raises reliability, and perhaps even credibility, questions. The study is based on a sample survey conducted between May and July of this year utilising a cluster sample methodology. Cluster sampling is a multi-stage procedure to select sample respondents. In the first stage, clusters, or small areas, of the region (in this case, Iraq) to be surveyed are selected. Within the clusters, neighbourhoods are selected, and then main streets; finally, particular residences are chosen and surveyed. (More details are given below.) Forty-seven clusters were selected in proportion to the population of 16 of the country's 18 Governorates. (Originally, 50 clusters were to be surveyed representing all Governorates, but operational problems necessitated omission of three.) Within each of the clusters, administrative units and main streets were chosen at random in proportion to population; then particular residential streets were chosen at random where households were surveyed. The plan was to interview forty households per cluster but, due to the vagaries of field operations under potentially dangerous conditions, fewer than 40 households were surveyed in some clusters. Thus, a sample of 1849 households with an average of 6.9 persons per household were surveyed, comprising a total of 12,801 individuals. Here arises a problem with the purported randomness of the cluster selection. According to the methodology as just outlined, all of the 47 clusters were located in urban areas. Rural areas do not have “streets or blocks” as such, nor do they have residential streets with 40 adjacent households. According to the study’s own documentation, every cluster was located in an urban area; none was selected in a rural area. According to the UN's 2004 Iraq Living Conditions Survey (ILCS), however, 7,132,000 of Iraq's total population of 27,132,000 live in rural areas. (See Table 1.6 on page 22 [numbered 21] of this pdf document.) Some 26% of Iraq's population live in rural areas, but not one of the 47 clusters was located in a rural area. The probability that, if a true random selection were made, all 47 clusters would be chosen from urban areas is 74% raised to the 47th power—a very small number indeed. It would appear that an a priori decision was made to exclude rural areas from consideration as cluster sites. In that case, the selection of sample respondents was not random. There are, I would think, good reasons for believing that armed conflict in urban areas is likely to kill more people than armed conflict in rural areas, other things being equal. It is therefore probable that the Lancet survey, because it includes only urban residents, is biased toward producing an overestimate of deaths. Serious questions are also raised by the description of field operations, according to which the survey went smoother than any survey I’ve ever heard of. There were two survey teams, each consisting of two female and two male interviewers, and one supervising field manager. The survey was in the field between 20 May and 10 July 2006. Survey respondents were chosen according to the procedure outlined above. Once a particular residential street was selected within an administrative unit within a cluster, a start household on the street was chosen at random. Beginning with that household, the interview team proceeded to survey adjacent households until forty were done. Here’s an outline of the survey content. Now check this summary of field operations: The interview team went to 1849 households in urban areas of Iraq and encountered only 15 refusals and only 16 residences where neither the head of the household nor a spouse was in. Don’t forget that they only went to each household once: there was no follow-up whatever. If I ran a door-to-door survey with a response rate of 98.3% on the first go-round, I’d think I’d died and gone to statisticians’ heaven. That is nothing short of miraculous. That response rate implies that family heads in urban Iraq are virtually always at home. Don’t heads of households and their spouses in urban Iraq have jobs? Don't they go out to meet friends? Do they never visit relatives in other neighbourhoods or towns? Do they not engage in any activities outside their homes? Are they never in the middle of a family meal and don’t want to be interrupted by unknown visitors asking intrusive personal questions? Never out shopping for groceries or passing the time of day at a local coffee shop or dropping off the family car at the mechanic’s? Do they just stay around the house all day every day? In short, do those folks living in urban Iraq have any semblance of normal lives? I realise that armed conflict would impel most people to huddle in their homes behind locked doors (in which case they would be unlikely to open the door to strangers), but that possibility doesn’t enter into it because the locations selected for interview were altered if they appeared unsafe. Admittedly, I have no personal experience of daily life in Iraq. Nevertheless, the 98.3% initial response rate is foreign, not just to my experience, but to any real-world survey situation imaginable. Here's another strange remark about this survey's field operations: According to the summary of the survey content, quoted above, there’s a lot of ground to cover in each interview. Locate the head of household or spouse (fortunately, 99.1% of ‘em were at home when the interviewers showed up), and obtain oral consent. List by age and sex everyone living there now and everyone who lived there on a particular date over four years ago. Find out what happened to each of them and when, and write it all down. Focus on the ones who had died: find out the cause and circumstances of death; then ask to see the death certificate. If they have one (as 92% did), have them dig it out so the interviewer can take a good look at it. If there’s a discrepancy between the official cause of death and the one reported by the interviewee, hash that out. (The more I think about all that, the more unlikely that 0.8% refusal rate seems.) Suppose each survey team is working 10-hour days. Even that’s pushing it because survey operations must be conducted with a view to finding respondents at home and willing to talk. (But apparently that's not a problem in urban Iraq.) That’s an average of four surveys per hour, i.e., one every fifteen minutes. Granted some interviews would be short: a husband and wife living alone for the past five years would only take a few minutes. Since the average household has over six members, however, interviews are much more likely to be lengthy. Also, the interviewers need meal and other breaks. The assertion that 40 households could be interviewed in one day strains credibility. Another discrepancy in the article’s description of operations raises the disturbing possibility that the survey could have been tainted by surveyor bias. Here’s the methodological description of the selection of respondent households. An administrative unit within the cluster was chosen at random, a main street within the administrative unit was chosen at random, a residential street crossing the main street was chosen at random, and a start household on the residential street was chosen at random. The interview team has no discretion whatever in the selection of survey respondents, with one exception (as already cited above): The article doesn’t say how often the interview team exercised its discretion to change to an alternate location. To me, that is a serious omission, unless we are to understand that this never, or rarely, happened. In any case, no instances are reported of interviewers coming under fire or other threat, so that would appear to have been a very unusual circumstance. Why then does this statement appear in the article? How could interviewers be “drawn” to particular houses if the selection of households was driven by a completely random process, except when interviewers felt insecure or otherwise at risk? The quoted statement doesn’t make sense in the context of what is supposed to be random choice of particular streets and households. It only raises further serious doubts about the sample selection process. There are many other problems with the Lancet study that could be discussed. What I’ve presented here, however, is more than sufficient to demonstrate that the survey behind the estimate of “excess” deaths was statistically unsound because biased by non-random selection of interview respondents. Moreover, the article’s description of survey field operations is, in the absence of further supporting documentation, highly problematic. In my judgment, the estimate of 655,000 deaths lacks solid foundation and therefore should not be relied upon. **************** http://magicstatistics.com/2006/10/18/lancet-researchers-ignored-superior-study-on-iraqi-deaths/ Lancet researchers ignored superior study on Iraqi deaths By StatGuy The Lancet article published online 11 October replicated, with a somewhat larger sample size, a 2004 study, also published in The Lancet and also done by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Medical School. Yet the researchers ignored a United Nations survey of Iraqis, conducted about the same time as the first Lancet survey, that found very different results. The 2004 Lancet article estimated that, between the US-led invasion of March 2003 and September 2004, 98,000 Iraqis died who would not have died had the invasion not occurred. The estimate had a 95% confidence interval of 8,000 - 194,000 deaths and was based on a cluster sample made up of 33 clusters of 30 households each for a total sample size of 988 households. (In one or two clusters, the full complement of households was not surveyed.) The United Nations conducted its Iraq Living Conditions Survey (ILCS) between April and August 2004. As its name implies, the survey was aimed at gathering data on a broad spectrum of indicators of living conditions about one year after Saddam Hussein was deposed. Measures surveyed related to housing, infrastructure, demographics, child health, nutrition, education, condition of women, labour market activity, income and wealth, etc. Because the ILCS was a much more comprehensive survey, its findings were not published until March 2005, several months after the 2004 Lancet article. The ILCS also produced an estimate of deaths since the invasion, but it was much lower than that published in the 2004 Lancet article. The estimate is discussed on p. 55 of the Analytical Report of the ILCS (pdf). Although the ILCS estimate of 24,000 is far below the 2004 Lancet estimate of 98,000, there is a statistical sense in which they are not inconsistent, for the huge confidence interval of the Lancet estimate (8,000 - 194,000) easily encompasses the ILCS estimate's confidence interval (18,000 - 29,000). Statistically, however, one would conclude that the ILCS estimate is to be preferred because of its much smaller confidence interval, other things being equal. The reason the confidence intervals differ so much in width is because the two estimates are based on different sample sizes. Both surveys used a cluster methodology of sample selection, but with different numbers of clusters and different number of households surveyed within each cluster. The Lancet survey selected 33 clusters from all of Iraq and then surveyed 30 households within each cluster. In the event, a total of 988 households were sampled. The ILCS selected 110 clusters from 17 of Iraq's 18 Governorates, with an additional 330 clusters from the remaining Governorate of Baghdad. Within each of the 2200 clusters, 10 households were surveyed. After removing six clusters due to operational considerations, the total sample size was 21,940 households. The ILCS used over 66 times as many clusters and surveyed over 22 times as many households as did the Lancet survey. No wonder the ILCS's confidence interval was much more precise. Based on the accompanying documentation, the ILCS was far superior to the Lancet survey across the whole gamut of survey operations. I won't go into details here, but those interested are referred to "Appendix 2: Technical Characteristics of the Living Conditions Survey Sample", found on pages 169-170 of the ILCS Analytical Report. Despite the obvious superiority of the ILCS to the 2004 Lancet survey, the 2006 Lancet article contains no discussion of the ILCS or its estimate of Iraqi deaths between March 2003 and August 2004. This I found odd. Articles in academic and professional journals that address topics of controversy generally include references to previously published studies and discuss the perspective the current article takes vis-à-vis the views and findings of those earlier studies. That is how scientific knowledge advances—by critically engaging published findings of other scholars and specialists. The authors of the 2006 Lancet article, however, appear uninterested in critical engagement with the ILCS estimate of Iraqi deaths. Yet we know that the Lancet researchers are aware of the ILCS, for they refer to it twice in their footnotes. The first page mentions "surveys that assessed the burden of conflict on the population" and the fact that "insufficient water supplies, non-functional sewerage, and restricted electricity supply . . . create health hazards", and for these the ILCS is footnoted. But as for critical discussion of the enormous difference between the ILCS estimate of deaths and the estimates generated from both Lancet surveys, the authors don't want to touch that. They don't even acknowledge its existence. As I said, in my experience scientific knowledge is not built up by ignoring previous relevant studies, especially ones that differ so radically from one’s own study. That the researchers behind the 2006 Lancet article did so reinforces the belief that their real agenda is not scientific knowledge but advocacy. *************** http://magicstatistics.com/2006/10/22/main-street-bias-in-lancet-study/ “Main street bias” in Lancet study By StatGuy One of the joys of blogging for me is interacting with people I'd never have met otherwise. My posts on the Lancet study of Iraqi deaths (background here) have afforded many opportunities for that. One in particular prompts this post. On Friday I received an e-mail from Sean Gourley, a physicist at the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, who has just co-authored a critical review of the Lancet study. He has graciously allowed me to report on his findings. His fellow researchers on this project are Neil Johnson, also in the Oxford Dept of Physics, and Michael Spagat of the Dept. of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London. As I pointed out in this post, the Lancet survey included only residents of urban areas, thus introducing significant bias into the results. Mr Gourley and his co-researchers argue that the survey methodology also excludes many urban residents, making bias problems even worse. The problem is what they call “main street bias”. The Lancet surveyors selected clusters by randomly choosing administrative units within Iraq’s Governorates in proportion to population. Then: Only residential streets crossing a “main street” were eligible for selection. Urban areas typically contain residential streets that do not cross a main street; but the methodology ruled them out. Such streets could never be selected for surveying. The map below, sent by Mr Gourley, shows a section of Oxford, UK. (The traffic circle near the top left corner is just across a short bridge from Magdalen College at the end of High Street, so it is only a few minutes’ walk from the centre of Oxford.) Three main streets are marked by the three black arrows; each street that does not cross one of them is marked by a red arrow. So, if the Lancet methodology were to be implemented in this section of Oxford, there would appear to be hundreds of households who could never be selected for surveying. Generally speaking, armed conflict is more common in or near main streets than in side streets. Certainly, given typical traffic patterns, conflict on main streets is likely to endanger more people. So, excluding streets that do not cross main streets would tend to result in overestimation of casualties. Thus, "main street bias". The crucial question becomes: How exactly did the Lancet surveyors define main streets? That question was put to lead author Gilbert Burnham, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, by the Oxford-Royal Holloway researchers. According to an article in Science (behind a subscriber wall, but Sean Gourley sent me a copy), Prof Burnham had two different, and apparently contradictory, answers. Every time I read a Lancet co-author defend that article, it just gets worse. If Prof Burnham doesn’t “know exactly how the Iraqi team conducted its survey”, how can he know whether the methodological description is oversimplified or not? Not only that, he admits that data have already been destroyed. To call this bad statistical practice is putting it mildly. Statisticians I know could be reprimanded or even lose their jobs if they destroyed data only a few months after a survey, especially one they knew ahead of time would generate public controversy. In my experience, it is standard procedure to store all survey materials in a secure location for an absolute minimum of three years—and, in practice, usually longer. Speaking of secure locations, it sounds like the Iraqi surveyors didn’t have one. If they really had no safe place to store completed surveys, they should not have gone out and gathered the data—and not just because of the potential consequences for interviewees if confidential information is leaked. No: the real issue here is the professionalism of the surveyors. Professional surveyors and statisticians take whatever steps are necessary ahead of time to ensure that confidentiality will be protected. If they couldn’t do that, they had no business going into the field in the first place. Now that essential information has been destroyed, there is no way of verifying Burnham’s claim that all streets, not only those crossing main streets, were included in the sample frame. Failing to ensure that data, analysis, and results can be independently verified is another indication of unprofessional statistical practice. I’m not the only one who’s irritated that the controversy over the Lancet article’s methodology has turned into a circus. Fred Kaplan at Slate has also had difficulty getting a straight answer from Gilbert Burnham about his study. Mr Kaplan concludes: I, too, would be very happy to see a thorough evaluation by independent experts—including statistical methodologists, not just the epidemiologists who seem to be running this little show. The only problem is that essential background information has been destroyed—or was never collected in the first place—so it may already be too late for that. ****************** Give it up, scrapper. The John Hopkins studies on Iraq mortality are BOGUS.
Reading problem, JT? innieway said he was NOT putting me on bozo.
I'll never put you on bozo either. I'm your friend, I'm not really like all the others.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering ****. - Tom Frost
What is it about FD4UM posters (and owners) that makes facts so frightening? I find it laughable that someone can BOAST about not listening to both sides of a debate ... as if that's a laudable approach to decision making and truth seeking. ROTFLOL!
I find it redeeming that you stomp your feet and scream censorship when the general public laughs at you. Does my heart good.
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering ****. - Tom Frost
There's no censorship on this site except the censorship of covering your own eyes. And that's laughable.
Do you collect Star Wars glasses from Pizza Hut?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering ****. - Tom Frost
And we all hold collective responsibility to insure... Where have I heard all this before?
If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering ****. - Tom Frost
What the fuck do you know about "the truth," BAC??
BeAChooser: What is it about FD4UM posters (and owners) that makes facts so frightening? I find it laughable that someone can BOAST about not listening to both sides of a debate ... as if that's a laudable approach to decision making and truth seeking. ROTFLOL! I swear, BAC, you continually show yourself to be an unparalleled numbskull. How can you be so thick not to see the stupidity of your latest "observation?" Christine is demonstrating open mindedness to the extreme by letting a reichwingbot like yourself post the spam drivel and propaganda that you do on 4um. And just because she exercises this type of tolerance for the absurd ( ie. you), it doesn't mean she has to smell your droppings up close. Grow up and show some gratitude why don't you? And btw when was the last time you were begged for cash by Christine or Zip for the opportunity to post your bot crap here? Huh? Think about that why don't you? At 4um you have free speech with no strings attached, no hidden agendas of the mods. Buy a clue. So are you still posting at freak republic or elpee? How much $ did you invest in both of those political discussion forums over the years?- I'll bet far more $ than some small change. And look where you ended up posting today. Thank your lucky stars for open minded generous people like christine and zipp or you'd be muttering to yourself in your closet instead of having a legitimate internet political forum-platform to disperse your smelly stuff on the net to other 4umers and lurkers alike. Gack - speaking of which - christine, zipporah - do we posters get 4um-issued gas masks to be able to handle all this gassy petoowy free speech from the likes of oozer???
I agree that she's proving there is no censureship at FD4UM and I thank her for that. No. If I were, you'd see a posts from BeAChooser.
Look oozer I would rather walk into traffic than "give up" to a tardbotshill like yourself. You boozer have zero credibility - what's your field of expertise? Do you have an MD? Do you have a PhD? Yes, no...uh huh I thought so. You are a net troll and a sad little specimen of a troll at that, I might add. Where do you get the authority to call Dr. Roberts ( PhD) a LIAR (those were your trailer park trash talk exact words)? What credentials empower you to sit in judgement of Dr. Burnham, MD? You think it's soooo evil for Dr. Burnham to support Dr. Roberts because Dr. Roberts is a Democrat( eeeek! keep your distance, BAC, you may catch Democrat cooties!) and because in an interview Dr. Burnham made this outrageous, scandalous statement: "Gil Burnham stated in an interview with The World Today before the study even began that, "we wouldn't go to the effort of doing something like this if we didn't feel that here was a situation that was egregious and, you know, there really needs to be some attention to what we can do to better protect the civilians." I take no joy in telling you this, BAC, but the fact that you take offense to such a caring human statement from Dr. Burnham reflects very poorly on you. You may be a darker individual than merely a sad little specimen of a troll. As for your spam quotes from that joke of a biased website called "Magic Statistics" ...harharharhar...did you think that I would not double check the "credibility" of this information "source?" You under estimate my intelligence and that of other 4um posters. Here's the bio of the website owner http://magicstatistics.com/about/ Let's see...hmmmm...: Perpetually perplexed Christian statistician, Scott Gilbreath, aka StatGuy, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Happily married to the wife of my youth (Prov 5:18). Okay okay - I'll keep my guffaws to a minimum - anyways, I have travelled to Canada on business in the past - to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and you know, "Whitehorse, Yukon" is not where the big fish of any profession live - Yukon is like next door to "the Northwest Territories" ie the Siberia of Canada frankly speaking - it's where teeny tiny minnows are FORCED to live because they can't get a job in the Canadian big cities - so in addition to your source being a rapture nutter he's also - let's put this politely to your tender BAC bot ears - your source is not a Canadian statistician success story. Do you get the picture, BAC? For a giggle I checked out at random what "your" statistician posted under Israel - what a joke - I think his Israel thread of articles and comments makes a definitive statement about his bias and credibility: http://magicstatistics.com/category/asia/middle-east/israel/ "Israeli Jews use Christian donations to help Muslims" "UN official praises Israel" "Israel to begin producing energy from oil shale" Ouch! Are you calling uncle yet, BAC? I'll stop now - I don't like poking fun at single focused israelfirster statisticians forced to live in Canada's Siberia. As for your hero, Kaplan...he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone...sounds like he may have some vested personal interests in down playing the numbers of civilian Iraqi Muslims killed for lies. Also, Freddy does not have a stats degree or an MD does he? So the long and short of it is that Freddy Kaplan is basically a layman, an artsy amateur. So when Freddy the music critic for Forward magazine doesn't "connect" or get a response he's expecting from Drs. Burnham, M.D. and Roberts, PhD...it could be that Drs. Burnham and Roberts can't be bothered to answer a biased isrealfirster shill. Anyways, time for you BAC to go back to your closet, plug into your Botenergizer, and try again tomorrow. It's late for your botbunny self. The adults are talking now.
I think the closet is where he hides his pics of Jeff Gannon.
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may know peace." -Thomas Paine In a CorporoFascist capitalist society, there is no money in peace, freedom, or a healthy population, and therefore, no incentive to achieve these. Looser, are you still trying to argue after being so totally destroyed on this thread by Scrapper2's post from Les Roberts totally rebutting all your phony arguments you've posted and reposted dozens of times and wasted hundreds of hours on? What proof do you have of anything you've alleged? How dare you demand that someone else provide proof for you, when you can't provide proof for anyone? You've been completely annihilated, not by a he-said she-said contest of dueling experts, but by basic logic. You started out trying to concoct a case - with deceptive intent - by trying to link 2 totally separate and distinct events. (1) A survey taken throughout Iraq, and (2) An attempt at the central government level to keep track of some paperwork during chaotic times. Then, when it's conclusively proved these events are in fact separate and distinct, because doctors also issue death certificates in Iraq besides hospitals and morgues, because the Iraqi central government and the LA Times never claimed to be trying to collate death certficates issued by doctors, and because even before the war started the central government was unable to match its numbers with the real deaths, you stomp your feet and call his source a liar. Then you huff and puff and demand further proof. Poor, poor Looser. You're second-hand goods now. What are you going to do? You can't very easily adopt another screen name. Your posting style will give you away in an instant, and then your humiliation will be even worse. Now tell me Looser Les Roberts says that even before the war started the Iraqi central government was unable to track the actual deaths throughout the country from Baghdad. So how many of your ***missing death certifiates, ROTFLOL*** were missing in 2002 before the Americans even attacked and invaded? They're obviously talking about hospitals, which also employ doctors. Individual doctors handing out death certificates are not an "overblown bureaucracy." So, more of your same-o, same-o, spam.
Note how the person who makes his living impugning amateur 911 detectives, brings out an anonymous internet blogger calling himself "Stat Guy" to make his case on this thread.
Call it what you will, I call it a bozo. He's done communicating with you. More than Bush, Cheney, the GOP and corporate AmeriKa, its party flacks like you who have this nation at war and on the verge of becoming 1/3 of the NAU. It's your support of party before country that allows this invasion of illegal aliens and the accompanying destruction of our culture. Computers are good for folks like you because were you alone, face to face with many here, you'd keep your thoughts to yourself. Don't bother responding back, I won't see it.
That's exactly what I was thinking. It's only an *expert* when BAC says it's an *expert*...
No matter how noble the objectives of a government; if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an EVIL government. Eric Hoffer
Short rant, but excellent and correct. ANYONE that buys into the whole left/right, conservative/liberal, dem/rep (the '2 party' thing is a fraud - it's all one big happy family of NWO criminals intent on seeing their goal come to fruition) paradigm is kidding themselves and stumbling through life with their eyes closed. Unfortunately, that describes about 95% of Amerika's population.
No matter how noble the objectives of a government; if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an EVIL government. Eric Hoffer
It's astounding watching the damage that strict adherance to party doctrine can do to a man(?). He's incapable of thinking beyond the cage they erect.
Having a little problem satisfactorily addressing the issues I and many others have raised about the John Hopkins studies? At least you got the name right, this time. Mind telling me why Dr Burnham hasn't resolved the factor of 3 discrepancy between peer reviewed estimates of pre-war infant mortality by one of the report authors and Roberts' *peer* reviewed estimate? Mind telling me why Dr Burnham didn't resolve the discrepancy between Lancet blessed estimates of pre-war mortality (by the UN and WHO) and John Hopkins numbers? You see, the pre-war mortality is a rather important number when estimating excess deaths caused by the invasion and alone could explain why the John Hopkins estimate for excess deaths is so outlandishly high. Mind telling me why Dr Burnham told Congress that "at the end of that survey where there was a death in the household, we asked, "By the way, do you have a death certificate?" And in 91 percent of households where this was asked, the households had death certificates." That sure borders on lying when he was supposedly part of the study and should know that description is false. Is it professional for a researcher to make public statements like he made before beginning the research? Don't you think the large contributions he made to a highly partisan democRAT candidate (who just happened to be lead researcher on the first report) might suggest a *little* bias on his part when he led the second effort? Do you think *Dr* Burnham did his job when he allowed such an obviously partisan and defective report to be published? I don't. ROTFLOL! Having a little problem satisfactorily addressing the questions that Dr Burnham simply ignored or was dishonest/misinformed about in his public interviews? Having a little difficulty with the issues and points made at by that writer? Hmmmmmmm? You ignored the most important part of that bio, scrapper. Occupation: STATISTICIAN. He works for the Yukon State Bureau of Statistics in Canada. He got his masters in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington in 1981. That being the case, he might actually have something credible to say about John Hopkins' methodology. But I'm sure you won't bother reading or trying to understand any of what he has to say. Because you already know the answer ... just like Burnham and Roberts knew the answer before they began their research. You can't face the probability that they fabricated their data, can you? And since you seem to want to use nothing but adhominems to defend YOUR two John Hopkins "heros" from specific complaints about their report methodology, bias and dishonesty, perhaps you'd like a few more names to smear: How about smearing the authors of this UN report: http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf ? Dr Jon Pedersen, who headed that study, is quoted in both the NYTimes and WaPO saying the Lancet numbers are "high, and probably way too high. I would accept something in the vicinity of 100,000 but 600,000 is too much." Here is more on what Dr Pedersen thinks about the John Hopkins work (http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2006/11/26/conversation-with-jon-pedersen-on-iraq-mortality-studies/ ) Debarati Guha-Sapir (director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels) was quoted in an interview for http://Nature.com saying that Burnham's team have published "inflated" numbers that "discredit" the process of estimating death counts. (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5339 ) And according to another interviewer, "She has some methodological concerns about the paper, including the use of local people — who might have opposed the occupation — as interviewers. She also points out that the result does not fit with any she has recorded in 15 years of studying conflict zones. Even in Darfur, where armed groups have wiped out whole villages, she says that researchers have not recorded the 500 predominately violent deaths per day that the Johns Hopkins team estimates are occurring in Iraq." Madelyn Hicks, a psychiatrist and public health researcher at King's College London in the U.K., says she "simply cannot believe" the paper's claim that 40 consecutive houses were surveyed in a single day. "There is simply not enough time in the day," she says, "so I have to conclude that something else is going on for at least some of these interviews." Households may have been "prepared by someone, made ready for rapid reporting," she says, which "raises the issue of bias being introduced." (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/314/5798/396 ) Dr. Hicks published a clarification of these concerns titled "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Were valid and ethical field methods used in this survey?", which concluded that, "In view of the significant questions that remain unanswered about the feasibility of their study’s methods as practiced at the level of field interviews,it is necessary that Burnham and his co-authors provide detailed, data-based evidence that all reported interviews were indeed carried out, and how this was done in a valid manner. In addition, they need to explain and to demonstrate to what degree their published methodology was adhered to or departed from across interviews, and to demonstrate convincingly that interviews were done in accordance with the standards of ethical research. If the authors choose not to provide this further analysis of their data, they should provide their raw data so that these aspects can be examined by others. Even in surveys on the sensitive and potentially risky subject of community violence, adequately anonymized data are expected to be sufficient for subsequent reanalysis and to be available for review. In the case of studies accepted for publication by the Lancet, all studies are expected to be able to provide their raw data." But as some of these sources have noted, they've refused to do so or they can't. Beth Daponte, senior research scholar at Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, after reading the Lancet article told Fred Kaplan "It attests to the difficulty of doing this sort of survey work during a war. … No one can come up with any credible estimates yet, at least not through the sorts of methods used here." Go ahead, scrapper, smear her: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1818 "So the pre-war CDR that the two Lancet studies yield seems too low. It may not be wrong, but the authors should provide a credible explanation of why their pre-war CDR is nearly half that of the UN Population Division. If the pre-war mortality rate was too low and/or if the population estimates were too high – because, for example, they ignored outflows of refugees from Iraq – the resulting estimates of the number of Iraqi "excess deaths" would be inflated." Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times, in an interview with PBS, questioned the study based on their earlier research in Iraq, saying, "Well, we think -- the Los Angeles Times thinks these numbers are too large, depending on the extensive research we've done. Earlier this year, around June, the report was published at least in June, but the reporting was done over weeks earlier. We went to morgues, cemeteries, hospitals, health officials, and we gathered as many statistics as we could on the actual dead bodies, and the number we came up with around June was about at least 50,000. And that kind of jibed with some of the news report that were out there, the accumulation of news reports, in terms of the numbers kill. The U.N. says that there's about 3,000 a month being killed; that also fits in with our numbers and with morgue numbers. This number of 600,000 or more killed since the beginning of the war, it's way off our charts." Let's hear your smear about Steven E. Moore, who conducted survey research in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority. In an article titled, "655,000 War Dead? A bogus study on Iraq casualties", Moore wrote, "I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points. Neither would anyone else...". Professor Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway's Economics Department, and physicists Professor Neil Johnson and Sean Gourley of Oxford University have published a highly detailed paper (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/Research/conflict-analysis/iraq-mortality/BiasPaper.html ). They claim (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/messages/press/message.asp?ref_no=367 ) the John Hopkin "study’s methodology is fundamentally flawed and will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq. The study suffers from "main street bias" by only surveying houses that are located on cross streets next to main roads or on the main road itself. However many Iraqi households do not satisfy this strict criterion and had no chance of being surveyed. Main street bias inflates casualty estimates since conflict events such as car bombs, drive-by shootings, artillery strikes on insurgent positions, and market place explosions gravitate toward the same neighbourhood types that the researchers surveyed." More on their work can be found here: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/Research/conflict-analysis/iraq-mortality/index.html . And then there's an article in Science magazine by John Bohannon which describes some of the above professors criticisms, as well as the response from Gilbert Burnham. Burnham claimed that such streets were included and that the methods section of the published paper is oversimplified. Bohannon says that Burnham told Science that he does not know exactly how the Iraqi team conducted its survey; and that the details about neighborhoods surveyed were destroyed "in case they fell into the wrong hands and could increase the risks to residents." Michael Spagat says the scientific community should call for an in-depth investigation into the researchers' procedures. "It is almost a crime to let it go unchallenged," says Johnson. In a letter to Science, the John Hopkins authors claim that Bohannon misquoted Burnham. Bohannon defended his comments as accurate, citing Burnham saying, in response to questions about why details of selecting "residential streets that that did not cross the main avenues" that "in trying to shorten the paper from its original very large size, this bit got chopped, unfortunately." Apparently, the details which were destroyed refer to the "scraps" of paper on which streets and addresses were written to "randomly" choose households". Such a well conducted survey. ROTFLOL! How about Alastair Mackay (aka AMac) (see http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006577.php and http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006694.php ) Surely you can find something nasty to say about him? And how about some of the members of Iraq Body Count? How about John Sloboda or Joshua Dougherty (AKA joshd)? They've made pretty strong criticisms of the John Hopkins' work. I posted some of them earlier on this thread. Want to smear them too, scrapper? Want to try connecting them to Israel? Or would like to actually address the many specific criticisms that have been raised in this thread. Stick to the facts and logic or smear?
Can't you stick to the facts and logic, IndieTX ... or is unfounded smear the only thing FD4UM'ers as a rule know?
Ping to Post # 212. You haven't proven this. And you certainly haven't proven that they issued half a million death certificates that the *system* is completely unaware of, AGAviator. Any direct quotes from some of those doctors in Iraq? Hmmmmm? Or just more CLAIMS by Les Roberts?
He's not anonymous. His name and many details of his life are widely available. Including the fact that he's a STATISTICIAN who works for the government of Canada.
ROTFLOL! That doesn't mean I won't communicate with him should he post some more misinformation.
BeAChooser: He's not anonymous. His name and many details of his life are widely available. Including the fact that he's a STATISTICIAN who works for the government of Canada. You are right - "stat guy" makes very clear everything there is to know about him. He's a christonutterisrealfirster who is such valuable respected stats guy that he works for the Cdn gov't in their Siberian hinterland outpost. And this stat guy is challenging the likes of the internationally respected Johns Hopkins public health center and 2 similarly respected professionals Dr. Roberts and Dr. Burnham. Comparing the curriculim vita of Drs Burnham and Roberts to "stats guy" in the Yukon, and it doesn't take genius to recognize who is more credible.
He [Stats Guy] works for the Yukon State Bureau of Statistics in Canada. He got his masters in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington in 1981. That being the case, he might actually have something credible to say about John Hopkins' methodology. You can't face the probability that they [ Drs. Burnham and Roberts]fabricated their data, can you? Here's the credentials of Dr. Les Roberts: In former work, Roberts was a Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee. In 1994 he worked in Rwanda for the World Health Organization, and performed a similar study to estimate the number of Rwandan refugees. In 2000, he performed a similar study which estimated 1.7 million deaths due to the war in the Congo [1]. This study met with widespread acceptance when published [2], and resulted and was cited in a U.N. Security Council resolution that all foreign armies must leave Congo, a United Nations request for $140 million in aid, and a pledge by the US State Department for an additional $10 million in aid. In 2007, Roberts is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Roberts did post-graduate fellowship work with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He obtained a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1992, and has been a regular lecturer there, teaching courses in numerous semesters. He obtained a masters degree in public health from Tulane University in 1986, and an undergraduate degree at St. Lawrence University in 1983 Here's the credentials of Dr. Burnham: Academic Degrees MD, Loma Linda University, 1968, MSc, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1977, Ph.D., University of London, 1988 Research and Professional Experience Dr. Gilbert M. Burnham is the co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins. He has extensive experience in emergency preparedness and response, particularly in humanitarian needs assessment, program planning, and evaluation that address the needs of vulnerable populations, and the development and implementation of training programs. He also has extensive experience in the development and evaluation of community- based health program planning and implementation, health information system development, management and analysis, and health system analysis. He has worked with numerous humanitarian and health development programs for multilateral and non-governmental organizations, regional health departments, ministries of health (national and district level), and communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. A major current activity is the reconstruction of health services in Afghanistan. Drs. Burnham and Roberts credentials experience int'l reputation TRUMP your stats guy from Yukon with a Masters in Economics from U of Washington hands down. Furthermore, Drs. Burnham and Roberts did not rise to the international stage of epidemiology, which is where they are now, by lying, oozer. As for ad hominems about Kaplan - what the heck is that about? Kaplan writes music related articles for The Forward magazine and he contributes journalistic pieces to Slate. He's an artsy kind of guy - and it's odd that with his academic background and professional interests thusfar that he'd bother to challenge a research study done by MD's/epidemiologists unless Kaplan had a personal interest in having the Muslim casualties down played. Isn't that a reasonable observation to make?
Which has what to do with the specific criticisms he outlines in detail in his blog articles? Any lurkers or visitors to FD4UM by now will observe that you don't want to discuss the details of the criticisms ... not by Mr Gilbreath or any one else. How about Burnham and Roberts versus Dr Jon Pedersen, Debarati Guha-Sapir, Dr Madelyn Hicks, Beth Daponte, Steven Moore, Professor Michael Spagat ... shall I go on? You see, scrapper, it's not just about credentials. It's about professionalism and addressing specific shortcomings in the methodology. It's about having good answers to what many highly qualified people see as red flags. It's about letting your biases get in the way of good research. Sadly, Drs Burnham and Roberts have demonstrated what not to do if good science is your goal.
b. How about Burnham and Roberts versus Dr Jon Pedersen, Debarati Guha-Sapir, Dr Madelyn Hicks, Beth Daponte, Steven Moore, Professor Michael Spagat ... shall I go on? You see, scrapper, it's not just about credentials. It's about professionalism and addressing specific shortcomings in the methodology. It's about having good answers to what many highly qualified people see as red flags. It's about letting your biases get in the way of good research. Sadly, Drs Burnham and Roberts have demonstrated what not to do if good science is your goal. a. That stat guy is a religious idealogue has everything to do with his bias. That his credentials both academic and experiential pale by comparison to those of Drs. Burnham and Roberts has everything to do with stat guy's lack of professional credibility. b. The fact that 26 medical field professionals signed a petition in support of Drs. Burnham and Roberts study - its methodology and findings - trumps any internet opinions of the people you cite. Did "Dr Jon Pedersen, Debarati Guha- Sapir, Dr Madelyn Hicks, Beth Daponte, Steven Moore, Professor Michael Spagat" sign a petition and stake their own reputations and those of the institutions they represent to support their opinions?
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/reports/lackdiversity.html "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities, August 28, 2003 ... snip ... we found these representations of registered faculty Democrats to Republicans: ... snip ... Columbia, Yale 14-1. He should be right at home. By all means, scrapper ... ignore the rest of what I posted in #212. Ignore the SPECIFIC and DETAILED criticisms levied by all of those folks. Ignore the fact that Roberts and Burnham continue to wave their hands at those criticisms. Ignore that not one argument put forth to explain the missing death certificates is defensible. It'a all par for the course here at FD4UM. Perhaps because "ignore" is the root word of ...
You asked me if there was anything that you could do for me...well, can you write a script to euthanize an entire thread from our screens? Thanks.
I had an idea for a "bozo thread" function, where you could elect to bozo an entire thread which would last for a week or so. If after a week it was still active, you could just rebozo it. It would be handy for threads you wish would just go away. Something like that?
b. By all means, scrapper ... ignore the rest of what I posted in #212. Ignore the SPECIFIC and DETAILED criticisms levied by all of those folks. Ignore the fact that Roberts and Burnham continue to wave their hands at those criticisms. Ignore that not one argument put forth to explain the missing death certificates is defensible. It'a all par for the course here at FD4UM. Perhaps because "ignore" is the root word of ... a. What does your laughably biased "study" by a throughly discredited neocon war monger punk named DAVID HOROWITZ, a former communist and Black Panther wannabe, have to do with the validity and credibility of the Johns Hopkins research study on Iraqi civilian deaths? BAC, your back is to the wall now if you resort to quoting anything with DAVID HOROWITZ's name on it. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I love it. Thank you BAC - you've just added 6 feet to the hole you've dug yourself in. DAVID HOROWITZ - oh my - tears are rolling down my face. b. You are coming undone, BAC. Call your therapist. I have not ignored any of the crap you have posted. Other 4um posters, like AGAviator, have not ignored what you have posted on this thread. What we have done is systematically discredited your arguments, your sources, and that's what has you unravelling at the seams. It's not about ignoring you. It's about answering you. It's about burying you.
Thanks. I think this thread has come to its natural conclusion. BAC did his swan song in #221.
rebozo flashed me to Bebe Rebozo - but that's another story from the past. I was thinking along the lines of banned to perdition, gone to hell, never to be seen again in this computer's lifetime type of bozoing...if that is possible, or you could have the time limit thingie, also...I would most often check eternity. Not wanting to stop anyone from participating or mindlessly bantering, I just don't want to waste my time, or disc-space from viewing it.
Technically, going the permo thread bozo route is just as easy to create, but needlessly puts a little more overhead on the system since it would always need to filter threads that have long since died off. Since persistent threads do die on their own sooner or later, it would be "cleanest" to just have it block the thread until it likely does. Balancing the desired features with overhead considerations helps keep the response time for all as speedy as possible.
Thanks for the explanation - just do what is best for all concerned. Stay safe down there. Cheers.
BAC, If you can't admit that even "YOUR" number of civilian deaths is testimony to the Bush Cabal War Crimes; you have nothing viable to contribute. You're just another Next-Generation Nazi, doing Tel Aviv's bidding.
Let's take a closer look at that so-called petition (btw, it's an internet petition, scrapper): **************** The Iraq deaths study was valid and correct October 21, 2006 LAST week, the medical journal The Lancet published the findings of an important study of deaths in Iraq. President George Bush and Prime Minister Howard were quick to dismiss its methods as discredited and its findings as not credible or believable. We beg to differ: the study was undertaken by respected researchers assisted by one of the world's foremost biostatisticians. Its methodology is sound and its conclusions should be taken seriously. Professor Gilbert Burnham and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and Al Mustansiriya University School of Medicine in Baghdad measured deaths in Iraq between January 2002 and July 2006. They surveyed 12,801 individuals in 1849 households in 47 representative clusters across the country. Their study is important in providing the only up-to-date, independent, and comprehensive scientific study of mortality after the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. The study found that mortality had risen alarmingly since March 2003 and continues to rise. The number of conflict-related excess deaths, above and beyond those that would normally occur, was estimated at 655,000. While precision about such figures is difficult, we can be confident that the excess deaths were above 390,000, and may in fact be as high as 940,000. The vast majority (92 per cent) of the excess deaths were due to direct violence. The cross-sectional household cluster sample survey method used is a standard, robust, well-established method for gathering health data. A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion (92 per cent) of deaths. Conservative assumptions were made about deaths of uncertain cause and about the small areas not sampled. Except in situations of highly reliable, well-maintained, comprehensive vital statistics collection — clearly not the case in Iraq at present — such surveys have been repeatedly demonstrated to be the best method for establishing population rates for key health indicators such as deaths, disability and immunisation coverage. Where passive information collection (such as death counts in morgues or hospitals) are incomplete, as is the case in Iraq today, population-based survey methods can be expected to find higher rates — often considerably higher — but that more accurately reflect the true situation. Conducting such a rigorous study within the constraints of the security situation in Iraq is dangerous and difficult, and deserves commendation. We have not heard any legitimate reason to dismiss its findings. It is noteworthy that the same methodology has been used in recent mortality surveys in Darfur and Democratic Republic of Congo, but there has been no criticism of these surveys. THE SIGNATORIES ... snip ... ***************** First, one can't help but notice that these doctors signed this within one week of the latest report being published. Not very much time for them to ponder the implications and methodology. And certainly a lot of potential defects have been pointed out by many since then. I wonder whether the doctors have ever defended the study from any of those specific criticism ... or if all they did was sign a petition and like you base their opinion solely on the credentials of the researchers. The second thing to notice is that the petition doesn't address a single one of the complaints I've pointed out in this thread. They point out that "A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion (92 per cent) of deaths" but apparently miss the implications of this if death certificates don't turn up with anywhere near the same regularity in the general population. Certainly their claim "We have not heard any legitimate reason to dismiss its findings" is interesting. In one week could they really have had time to carefully read the study, ponder its methodology and potential shortcomings, pay attention to what others had to say about it (a debate that actually took some time to mature), put together a petition and publish it? No. What their petition looks like is a rush to judgement. Now why would they do that? Well let's look at some of the names. According to this, "James Angus was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne in July 2003. Before becoming dean, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. He has extensive research experience in pre-clinical pharmacology in relation to cardiovascular and antinociceptive drugs." Now just what does he know about statistics and surveys ... compared to say Dr Pendersen or Dr Hicks? And has he written ANYTHING about the study, Iraq or mortality since then? No. According to this, his interest is "cancer causes and control, measuring and improving the performance of cancer services". Again, where does it suggest he know anything about proper surveying methodologies for problems like war related dead? He's a skin cancer expert. Has he written anything since about Iraq? No. This gentleman actually does have survey experience similar to Roberts' and Burnham's. He even teaches a course that "Provides a theoretical introduction and is followed by practical experience in critically appraising both published research findings and proposals for new research." So you'd think he'd have asked a few questions like those I and others have been asking before putting pen to virtual paper. Has he written anything since about Iraq? No. Again, outside of signing that petition he hasn't written anything about Iraq or the John Hopkins' studies. According to this, "he is a paediatric infectious disease specialist with extensive experience working with Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory; established research record in the field of Group A Streptococcal disease covering all aspects from molecular biology to epidemiology and public health; involved with the current international effort to develop an agenda of research to support pneumococcal vaccine introduction in the developing world." I wonder why he felt so certain about the statistical methodology and results to sign that petition so quickly? But again, he's written nothing about Iraq before or since so it's hard to know. According to this, "Ben Coghlan is a medical epidemiologist and public health physician trainee. e has worked for a variety of organisations (Australian Red Cross, MSF, IRC and WHO) providing assistance to refugee and displaced populations in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. He is an honorary lecturer with Monash University’s Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine and teaches for the International Health stream of the Master of Public health degree, the Master of International Research Bioethics and for the undergraduate medical course. He has also taught epidemiology, communicable disease control and refugee health courses in Uganda, PNG, and Cambodia." And unlike the others "He has conducted cross-sectional surveys in conflict settings assessing mortality, nutritional status and immunisation coverage." And unlike the others, he apparently wrote something about Iraq and the lancet study back in October 2006, about the time he signed the petition. http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=1942 Too bad I can't read it because you have to subscribe to read it and I don't care to do that right now. But I gather its because he says the Burnet Institute (where he works) used the same methodology (clustering) in a study that found 3.9 million Congolese had perished because of that conflict. Ergo any study that uses clustering must be right. I gather Duabe is an expert on tobacco, smoking and cancer. But other than his signature on the petition, I don't see anything written on Iraq or the Lancet reports. Although I hear he is concerned about its use of cigarettes. You know ... I don't really care to spend more time on this. I think readers will get the ghist of what I'm noting about these doctors. I am beginning to think Australian universities are even more liberal than ours. Certainly there appears to be a tendency in that direction amongst the signatories of this petition. I wonder if one could find a correlation between them in terms of who their friends are? ROTFLOL! PS ... I don' t know if you're aware of this but some of these doctors signed a previous petition in September of 2004, condemning the Iraq war. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/04/1094234080677.html Among them was Bruce Armstrong, Rob Moodie and Anthony Zwi. Does that suggest they might have a preconceived bias and just like to sign petitions? They did more than that. They actually got themselves quoted in the mainstream press. And many of them wrote whole articles on the topic. I'd say they put a whole lot more on the line than your fabulous 26, scrapper. ROTFLOL!
Isn't it amazing the lengths to which certain people would go to hide from facts?
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest"The bottom line is that even if there's only been 50,000 civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined - that's more than the combined deaths from all terrorist events WORDLWIDE SINCE 1968"
#193. To: scrapper2, AGAviator, robin, christine, All (#187)
We don't know the political affiliations of Dr. Birnham, the co-author,
or the JH's research team as a whole who worked on the research team. Do you think they are all "Democrats?"
b. You don't trust the Lancet or the Lancet peer review committee of medical experts who reviewed the methodology and findings of the JH's study.
c. You don't trust the 26 independent medical professionals who signed a petition in support of Dr. Roberts and Dr. Burnham, dramatically/pointedly putting their own considerable reputations on the line.
[S]election of survey sites was by random numbers applied to streets or blocks . . . [p. 2]
The survey purpose was explained to the head of household or spouse, and oral consent was obtained. Participants were assured that no unique identifiers would be gathered. No incentives were provided. The survey listed current household members by sex, and asked who had lived in this household on January 1, 2002. The interviewers then asked about births, deaths, and in-migration and out-migration, and confirmed that the reported inflow and exit of residents explained the differences in composition between the start and end of the recall period. Separation of combatant from non-combatant deaths during interviews was not attempted, since such information would probably be concealed by household informants, and to ask about this could put interviewers at risk. Deaths were recorded only if the decedent had lived in the household continuously for 3 months before the event. Additional probing was done to establish the cause and circumstances of deaths to the extent feasible, taking into account family sensitivities. At the conclusion of household interviews where deaths were reported, surveyors requested to see a copy of any death certificate and its presence was recorded. Where differences between the household account and the cause mentioned on the certificate existed, further discussions were sometimes needed to establish the primary cause of death. [p. 2]
In 16 (0·9%) dwellings, residents were absent; 15 (0·8%) households refused to participate. [p. 4]
Decisions on sampling sites were made by the field manager. The interview team were given the responsibility and authority to change to an alternate location if they perceived the level of insecurity or risk to be unacceptable. [p. 2]
One team could typically complete a cluster of 40 households in 1 day. [p. 4]
The third stage consisted of random selection of a main street within the administrative unit from a list of all main streets. A residential street was then randomly selected from a list of residential streets crossing the main street. On the residential street, houses were numbered and a start household was randomly selected. From this start household, the team proceeded to the adjacent residence until 40 households were surveyed. For this study, a household was defined as a unit that ate together, and had a separate entrance from the street or a separate apartment entrance. [p. 2]
The interview team were given the responsibility and authority to change to an alternate location if they perceived the level of insecurity or risk to be unacceptable. [p. 2]
Although interviewers used a robust process for identifying clusters, the potential exists for interviewers to be drawn to especially affected houses through conscious or unconscious processes. Although evidence of this bias does not exist, its potential cannot be dismissed. [p. 7, footnote omitted]
The number of deaths of civilians and military personnel in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion is another set of figures that have raised controversy. The ILCS data indicates 24,000 deaths, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000 deaths.
The third stage consisted of random selection of a main street within the administrative unit from a list of all main streets. A residential street was then randomly selected from a list of residential streets crossing the main street. On the residential street, houses were numbered and a start household was randomly selected. From this start household, the team proceeded to the adjacent residence until 40 households were surveyed.
Burnham counters that such streets were included and that the methods section of the published paper is oversimplified. He also told Science that he does not know exactly how the Iraqi team conducted its survey; the details about neighborhoods surveyed were destroyed “in case they fell into the wrong hands and could increase the risks to residents.”
Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who specializes in civil conflicts, says the scientific community should call for an in-depth investigation into the researchers’ procedures. “It is almost a crime to let it go unchallenged,” adds [Neil] Johnson.
It sounds as if he's saying he didn't destroy the data because they never existed in the first place. If that's the case, how does Burnham know whether his instructions on methodology were followed at all? How can anyone verify the findings? And this is a peer-reviewed article. Who were these peers? And what did they review?
#194. To: Jethro Tull, innieway, ALL (#188)
JT to innieway - Good for you (putting him on bozo).
#195. To: BeAChooser (#194)
#196. To: christine, ALL (#191)
it's actually enjoyable to read everyone else's posts with BeAChooser bozo'd. ;)
#197. To: BeAChooser (#196)
#198. To: Dakmar, ALL (#197)
I find it redeeming that you stomp your feet and scream censorship when the general public laughs at you.
#199. To: BeAChooser (#198)
#200. To: BeAChooser (#198)
There's no censorship on this site except the censorship of covering your own eyes. And that's laughable.
#201. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#196)
..... and truth seeking.
#202. To: BeAChooser, christine, zipporah, All (#196)
(Edited)
christine: it's actually enjoyable to read everyone else's posts with BeAChooser bozo'd. ;)
#203. To: scrapper2, christine, ALL (#202)
Christine is demonstrating open mindedness to the extreme
So are you still posting at freak republic or elpee?
#204. To: BeAChooser, AGAviator, All (#193)
(Edited)
Give it up, scrapper. The John Hopkins studies on Iraq mortality are BOGUS.
#205. To: scrapper2 (#204)
Anyways, time for you BAC to go back to your closet, plug into your Botenergizer, and try again tomorrow. It's late for your botbunny self. The adults are talking now.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
- - IndieTX
#206. To: BeAChooser, scrapper2 (#180)
(Edited)
You have NO PROOF they stayed in the Green Zone and didn't interview doctors
Here's another interesting article by the LATimes.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0518-02.htm
It's on Baghdad's death toll and dates from May of 2003. It states that "meticulous record-keeping was the norm in Hussein's Iraq, which for decades sustained an overblown bureaucracy.
#207. To: scrapper2 (#193)
#208. To: BeAChooser (#194)
I WILL NOT REPLY TO YOU AGAIN. - innieway
#209. To: AGAviator (#207)
Note how the person who makes his living impugning amateur 911 detectives, brings out an anonymous internet blogger calling himself "Stat Guy" to make his case on this thread.
#210. To: Jethro Tull (#208)
More than Bush, Cheney, the GOP and corporate AmeriKa, its party flacks like you who have this nation at war and on the verge of becoming 1/3 of the NAU. It's your support of party before country that allows this invasion of illegal aliens and the accompanying destruction of our culture.
#211. To: innieway (#210)
#212. To: scrapper2, all (#204)
You boozer have zero credibility - what's your field of expertise? Do you have an MD? Do you have a PhD? Yes, no...uh huh I thought so. You are a net troll and a sad little specimen of a troll at that, I might add.
What credentials empower you to sit in judgement of Dr. Burnham, MD?
I take no joy in telling you this, BAC, but the fact that you take offense to such a caring human statement from Dr. Burnham reflects very poorly on you. You may be a darker individual than merely a sad little specimen of a troll.
As for your spam quotes from that joke of a biased website called "Magic Statistics"
Here's the bio of the website owner
Kaplan
#213. To: IndieTX, scrapper2, ALL (#205)
I think the closet is where he hides his pics of Jeff Gannon.
#214. To: AGAviator, scrapper2, ALL (#206)
Looser, are you still trying to argue after being so totally destroyed on this thread by Scrapper2's post from Les Roberts totally rebutting all your phony arguments you've posted and reposted dozens of times and wasted hundreds of hours on?
doctors also issue death certificates in Iraq besides hospitals and morgues,
#215. To: AGAviator, ALL (#207)
brings out an anonymous internet blogger calling himself "Stat Guy" to make his case on this thread.
#216. To: Jethro Tull, innieway, ALL (#208)
Call it what you will, I call it a bozo. He's done communicating with you.
#217. To: BeAChooser (#215)
AGAviator: brings out an anonymous internet blogger calling himself "Stat Guy" to make his case on this thread.
#218. To: BeAChooser, AGAviator (#212)
BeAChooser: Or just more CLAIMS by Les Roberts?
#219. To: scrapper2, ALL (#217)
He's a christonutterisrealfirster
Comparing the curriculim vita of Drs Burnham and Roberts to "stats guy" in the Yukon, and it doesn't take genius to recognize who is more credible.
#220. To: BeAChooser, AGAviator (#219)
a. He's a christonutterisrealfirster Which has what to do with the specific criticisms he outlines in detail in his blog articles? Any lurkers or visitors to FD4UM by now will observe that you don't want to discuss the details of the criticisms ... not by Mr Gilbreath or any one else.
#221. To: scrapper2, AGAviator, ALL (#218)
In 2007, Roberts is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Drs. Burnham and Roberts credentials experience int'l reputation TRUMP your stats guy from Yukon with a Masters in Economics from U of Washington hands down. Furthermore, Drs. Burnham and Roberts did not rise to the international stage of epidemiology, which is where they are now, by lying, oozer.
#222. To: Neil McIver (#221)
#223. To: lodwick (#222)
#224. To: BeAChooser, AGAviator, christine, robin (#221)
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/reports/lackdiversity.html "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities, August 28, 2003 ... snip ... we found these representations of registered faculty Democrats to Republicans: ... snip ... Columbia, Yale 14-1.
#225. To: lodwick, Neil McIver (#222)
You asked me if there was anything that you could do for me...well, can you write a script to euthanize an entire thread from our screens?
#226. To: Neil McIver (#223)
Something like that?
#227. To: lodwick (#226)
#228. To: Neil McIver (#227)
#229. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#221)
#230. To: scrapper2, AGAviator, ALL (#220)
The fact that 26 medical field professionals signed a petition in support of Drs. Burnham and Roberts study - its methodology and findings - trumps any internet opinions of the people you cite.
THE SIGNATORIES
Professor James A Angus, dean, faculty of medicine, dentistry and health sciences, University of Melbourne
Professor Bruce Armstrong AM, director of research, Sydney Cancer Centre; professor of public health and medical foundation fellow, University of Sydney
Dr Jim Black, head of epidemiology, Victorian Infectious Diseases Service
Professor Peter Brooks, executive dean, faculty of health sciences, University of Queensland
Professor Jonathan Carapetis, director, Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin
Dr Ben Coghlan, medical epidemiologist, Centre for International Health, Burnet Institute
Professor Mike Daube, professor of health policy, Curtin University
Did "Dr Jon Pedersen, Debarati Guha- Sapir, Dr Madelyn Hicks, Beth Daponte, Steven Moore, Professor Michael Spagat" sign a petition and stake their own reputations and those of the institutions they represent to support their opinions?
#231. To: Neil McIver, lodwick, ALL (#223)
I had an idea for a "bozo thread" function, where you could elect to bozo an entire thread which would last for a week or so. If after a week it was still active, you could just rebozo it. It would be handy for threads you wish would just go away. Something like that?
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