Lancet Study Discredits Soros – Again.
Hot Air has a post up about the dishonest 2006 study by the the British medical journal Lancet concerning Iraqi civlian deaths during the war there (yes, it’s the one your liberal friends keep parroting). In a rare display of outrage, the author of the study Gilbert Burnham has been publicly rebuked by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for violating its code of professional ethics by refusing to disclose the details behind the claims that 654,965 “excess” Iraqis died because America invaded Iraq.
Both Iraq casualty studies were widely debated at the time of their release, shortly before U.S. elections. The 2004 report was released Oct. 29, just before that year’s presidential election; an Associated Press report at the time said the lead author, Les Roberts, had described himself as anti-war and said he’d insisted the study be released in advance of the election to prompt debate on the subject. The 2006 lead author, Burnham, said he had no political motivations: “We do this from science.”
Questions about the studies have included the sampling approach, the estimate of baseline deaths (necessary to compute an “excess” figure) and the sheer level of deaths reported – in 2006, the equivalent of more than 500 a day for more than three years, far outstripping other estimates.
In AAPOR’s statement, its president, Richard A. Kulka, said: “When researchers draw important conclusions and make public statements and arguments based on survey research, then subsequently refuse to answer even basic questions about how their research was conducted, this violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues, and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research.”
The study has been dismissed for years by many in the media because of distrust of it’s author – and not just because he’s so secretive. He also happens to be hyper-partisan funded by George Soros!
Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.
The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.
New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people – less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate – have died since the invasion in 2003.
“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The Lancet study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by Les Roberts, an associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University. He reportedly opposed the war from the outset.
Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.
Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”
Mr. Roberts can be adamant about that because the outcome was preordained. No one could have paid him enough to put out an honest study on a subject he was eager to lie about. Everyone associated with this study has earned the taint of corruption it represents.
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