"Just staggeringly piss-poor"

Those were the words used by commenter Jeff H on a post I made nearly 15 months ago describing the politically timed release of the Lancet study, a study purporting 665,000 Iraqi deaths (to date) since the start of the Iraq war.  I was quick to jump on the Religious Left's quickness in jumping on and using the study as fodder for more anti-war, anti-Bush rants.

Jeff's words have proven to be not only descriptive but prescient.

The good people at the Media Mythbusters Blog make the point:

From Rocket’s Brain Trust:

Here’s something for MMB from Instapundit in case you missed it.

From Instapundit:

BIG — AND DEVASTATING — NEWS ON THAT LANCET STUDY claiming massive civilian deaths in Iraq. A National Journal cover story by Neil Munro suggests the possibility of outright scientific fraud. Munro notes serious problems with the study, and a failure on the part of The Lancet’s staff to determine if the data on which it was based — data which the authors will not share — were even true. In addition, there are problems with conflicts of interest and political bias. This is a big deal story; it’ll be interesting to see if it gets the attention it deserves.

UPDATE: Some background here. (Bumped).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here. “This should be a lesson to Old Media that a little digging is in order when something so out of line with previous reports shows up. But it’s one that probably won’t be learned — at least when outlier studies like Lancet’s fit their advocacy template.”

posted at 09:52 AM by Glenn Reynolds

One of the things I love about blogging is the ability to quickly go back and find that which made the point then and as time passes, makes the point all the more... well... pointedly, later.

I think the more time passes, the more we're going to find that the portrayal of the Iraq war as a quagmire, as a mistake of historical proportions, as a waste, is simply staggeringly piss-poor.

And fraudulent.

Comments

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Rick,

In case you're not already familiar with it, I recommend Bernard Goldberg's book, if I'm remembering right there is a chapter that deals with AIDS and how fashionable it was in the late 1980's to tout this-or-that study reporting "one million infected (in the U.S.)." It goes into the methodology by which this number is calculated, and I was given cause to think about this when the Lancet study first came under scrutiny. There is a lot in common with the botched AIDS studies and the botched Lancet study.

I'm referring specifically to this business about gathering statistics for a smaller locality, and then extrapolating that throughout a much larger selection of geography by means of simple multiplication.

It's pretty simple to explain and understand how that can get things all cock-eyed. For example, it wouldn't be hard at all to sample the population density of New England and environs, and based on that release a "report" concluding there are 25 BILLION people living in the United States. That would be pretty easy. And hey, your logic would be "sound." It would be simple math. Why, any sixth grader would be able to see you did it "right."

All of which raises the question, in my mind if in nobody else's: Before blogs came along, just how often was this crap spread all over us without our even knowing about it, and how thick?

[Rick]

All of which raises the question, in my mind if in nobody else's: Before blogs came along, just how often was this crap spread all over us without our even knowing about it, and how thick?

A question I've found myself asking often since I started surfing the blogosphere and finding out for myself how fraudulent so much of what is reported as conventional wisdom really is.

My passing this kind of info along is in small part what keeps me keeping on in my small corner of the 'sphere.

[salvage]

I guess the morgues in Iraq were overflowing with imagination rather than corpses.

The increase of diseases and the child mortality rate couldn't possible have an effect.

And hey nothing makes a health care system run better than daily attacks on civilians.

It's so cute they way you try and whitewash the bloodbath.

Yeah, millions of Iraqis have run away from their homes because it's a safe and healthy place to live.