Fumento doesn't seem to have bothered to read the Lancet article. He claims they didn't look at death certificates when in fact they did. And he claims that the estimate depends on Falluja when ion fact Falluja was included in the calculation. More here.
Tim Lambert is on a personal Jihad to debunk my debunking. I did not say death certificates were not used, they were. But so was alleged personal recall. That means that if a family recalled ten deaths of people who were alive and well, they went straight into the pot. The authors claimed to have come up with one set of numbers including Falluja, another without. But strangely, they never present the "without numbers." Lambert knows this because I told him directly. Anyway, it's in the study -- or rather, it's NOT in the study. He also ignores the vast number of other problems with the study, figuring that if he can discredit two points he can discredit the whole article. Yet in a follow-up, I show that there are even more flaws than I identified in the TCS piece. It can be found at http://www.fumento.com/military/
...cetscripps.html
Who are you going believe, Fumento, or your lying eyes? Look.
A quick refresher on where the Lancet study's authors included the "without Falluja" numbers. It's in the paper's abstract. That's the thing that comes right at the beginning: "We estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected (8,000 –194,000)happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included."
It would be one thing if Fumento simply misspoke in his original TCS piece when he said the inclusion of the Falluja cluster biased the study and made it worthless. But in the face of Lambert and others repeatedly quoting the precise, clear and unambiguous wording with which the study did exactly the opposite, *excluding* the Falluja data as an outlier, Fumento continues to misrepresent it. I encourage Eye Doc readers to go read the study for themselves (follow Tim's link above), then make up their own minds about whether Fumento is intellectually honest or not.
There is nothing in Fumento's analysis which even comes close to disputing the Lancet article -- indeed, it's not even clear he read the abstract.
There is a wide body of epidemiology literature -- people know how to examine death rates. This paper uses the same methods used in countless other studies, and unlike Fumento's work, must be reviewed by peers in this field before being allowed to be published. If you have serious problems with the paper on these grounds, you're more than welcome to share them with the scientific community.
As for this statement: ``and the authors of The Lancet article had an anti-Bush agenda when they published their study'' -- this is properly known as an `ad hominem' argument (you may want to look that up). It is usually used by people who have no strong counterargument, so they question the motives of the people advancing an argument, rather than questioning the actual argument itself. It's a sign of either lacking a counter-argument, or intellectual laziness.
Lambert, Fleck, and Dursi (an epidemiologica expert because his field is astronomy) just won't let go. The study did not present numbers that included Falluja, either in the abstract or text. Yet they accuse ME of not reading it.
As to "my" statement that ``the authors of The Lancet article had an anti-Bush agenda" I never wrote that. Dursi did. If I did say it, however, it would not be an ad hominem it would indicate motive for bias.
What I wrote, which should hardly be a matter of contention since you can read my piece yourself, is that while the methodology itself might be proper it is also open to bias. To show bias I then wrote:
"Roberts admitted to the Associated Press that 'I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea" and 'Lancet editor Richard Horton told the BBC "Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths not fewer,' in Iraq. He also said, "the evidence we publish today must change heads as well as pierce hearts."
Michael Fumento is quite extraordinary. How can he continue to say this? The text in the abstract and in the body quite clearly gives figures both with and without Falluja. E.g. maximum likelihood estimate of death risk is increased 2.5 times including Falluja and only 1.5 times without. This is not so much deception as sheer madness. Or maybe he has a different copy of the paper?
PS I think the study has real problems - but this barefaced untruth in the face of easily viewable evidence to the contrary - well the he should resign.
PPS Ad hominem is quite compatible with potential for bias. In fact they usually coincide. e.g. doubting a global warming sceptic because they work for an oil company.
This Fumento guy's amazing. First he accuses the authors of the Lancet study of biasing their results by including the Falluja data. Now, with what appears to be a rhetorical straight face, he seems to be accusing them in the comments here of not including it.
Why the change of heart, Michael?
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