Psyche, Science, and Society

Celebrate Legalize Torture day

Just a reminder. Today, October 17th, is an historic day. It’s the day that it became legal for the United States to lock anyone up forever and torture them as long as they want. Kinda cool. Right?

Add comment October 17th, 2006

A very brave researcher on Iraqi mortality study

The UN’s IRIN news service has a brief article on the new Iraq mortality study. Among the notable things about it is that the Iraqi members of the research team are quoted:

Researchers from Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad on Sunday backed the results of their controversial survey on the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the US-led occupation of the country began in 2003….

“We can say that the research is more representative because it depended on what families were telling us. But it also shows a different Iraq reality and according to our valuation on the [margin of] error, from that 600,000 people, we are sure that 250,000 have been killed since March 2003,” Barak Ibrahim, a political analyst and professor at Mustansiryiah University, told IRIN. He also participated in the research….

Ibrahim said that the mortality rate in Iraq has risen from about 5.5 people per 1,000 per year before 2003 to 19.8 deaths per 1,000 people in June this year. This would include all causes of death, and not just violent deaths.

The article also includes gives a sense that Iraqis not affiliated with the government think the study is right-on:

“The toll in the report exceeds reality in an unreasonable way and the report gives inflated numbers in a way that violates all rules of research and the precision required of research institutions,” Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesperson, said.

However, Iraqi citizens support the figures and feel that their leaders have been hiding the truth from them, analysts say.

“Iraqis are dying like fish in a poisoned lake. They are insignificant lives and the numbers of the research just proves that. The Iraqi government wants to hide the reality but it is not necessary because it is very clear now, just proving what we already suspected before,” said Muhammad Jaboury, a gold seller at Mansour district in the capital, Baghdad.

Importantly, the UN’s Jan Egeland admits to being surprised by the extent of reported mortality, but is willing to entertain the possibility that it’s correct:

The United Nations has expressed surprise at the findings, which are far higher than its own, but has neither discredited or confirmed them yet.

“I was myself really surprised over this very high figure, and I do not know their methodology and how they’ve reached this,” Jan Egeland, the UN’s humanitarian chief, was quoted as saying to the Associated Press on Thursday.

“It is clear that 100 people die from blunt violence every day [in Iraq], probably more than any other place on earth today. How many die beyond that from associated causes is what we do not [know]… and we don’t know whether they give the right figure or not.”

Egeland went on to say that he was aware of “many, many cases where there is underreporting” of casualties, which could explain the vast difference between the Lancet study and other reports that put the number of deaths in the tens of thousands.

See also the comments of epidemiologist Francesco Checchi on the mortality study:

I too find the survey’s estimates shockingly high: while the trend of increasing violence seems indisputable, the sheer death toll seems at first glance inconsistent with even the most pessimistic rule of thumb guesses, at least from an outsider perspective.

However, dismissing Burnham et al.’s work simply on gut feeling grounds seems more than irrational. A very similar methodology is routinely applied in many other settings for the same purpose.

The Lancet’s publication approach, while obviously prone to human error, is designed to identify only the most scientifically solid medical research, thanks to the anonymous review of recognised experts in the field.

The survey features a lot of compelling aspects - for example, reported deaths were certifiable; non-violent death rates were broadly consistent with pre-war conditions, suggesting no over-reporting by families; the profile and typology of violent deaths reflects what is expected; and, crucially, findings mirrored closely those of a previous Hopkins/Mustansiriya survey in 2004.

No study is perfect

Of course, no study is perfect, all the more so when conducted in the most insecure country on Earth - so insecure, in fact, that carrying around a harmless GPS unit so as to randomly select households to be interviewed places one at risk of being mistaken for a bomb detonator, as Burnham et al. point out.

Indeed, not being able to use GPS for sampling, the research team settled for a less ideal approach based on a random selection of residential streets, which is probably more prone to bias.

But therein lies the rub - that in Iraq today, insecurity has made it almost inhumanly difficult to conduct proper research on the harms and benefits of war. Indeed, what both media and pundits seem to never highlight as a deeply troubling anomaly is that, were it not for the work of a few courageous researchers such as the Hopkins/Mustansiriya University team, or the painstaking work of concerned members of the citizenry such as the Iraqi Body Count project, quantifying the effects of the U.S.-led intervention on human health would largely be a matter of divination.

Twenty-four hours later, the Lancet study is fast disappearing off the news headlines. Dismissing and, worse, ignoring this and other alarming findings simply because “they sound wrong” is no way to move forward - if they can’t be proven wrong (or partly wrong) on scientific grounds, they must certainly stand, until better evidence emerges.

Add comment October 17th, 2006