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The Poorman is back, with a cute cat, channeling Powerline:

Tim Blair demolishes the recent so-called “scientific” study which purports to show that Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the Iraq war number over half a million:

Lancet’s number of documented deaths in Iraq, upon which the respected medical journal based its Iraqi mortality study, is but a mere 0.0835% of Lancet‘s estimated post-invasion death total.

The “estimate” part of Lancet’s equation is 99.9%.

Exactly. Perhaps these geniuses should have taken a class in statistics before they submitted their paper to a prestigious scientific journal which accepted it. What the Lancet study really shows is that 99.9% of 650,000 people are estimated to be dead, which is not at all the same thing as being really dead. I mean, maybe they were just really, really tired after a hard day of greeting US troops as liberators! But, once again, a perfectly plausible explanation is discounted in order to bash Bush.

JOHN adds: Was the Lancet servey undertaken at night? Because that would tend to oversample really deep sleepers, who might well be estimated to be dead.

SCOTT adds: I think you are both being niave. Obviously, the Iraqis were merely pretending to be dead in order to make Bush look bad, and the Lancet “scientists” were only too happy to be their useful idiots.

Posted by Paul at 5:00 PM |