>You see what I mean. Who is really to blame?
A lot of people think that Tony Blair is to blame - for egging on George
Bush to go to war. That is not a very scientic kind of statement. But
Blair does seem to have admitted guilt, not explicitly in words, but by
bowing to political pressures and promising to resign. Bush's involvement
in the war will be put to some kind of numerical test in the mid-term
elections this week.
Raising questions about who is to blame is not the only way in which
discussion of Iraq on this list seems to have gone seriously askew. I'd
like to take up a relatively minor example.
Kevin McConway wrote:
> Average age at death, for deaths
> in a particular year, depends on the population age structure in that
> year, which in turn depends in a possibly horrendously complicated way
> on the history of the people who happen to be living in the country in
> question in that year (so involves previous migration, mortality and
> fertility even in an area where the borders haven't changed).
Kevin is formally correct in pointing to to the range of factors affecting
the average age of death. But would it not be reasonable to assume that
biggest single factor in Iraq over the period since 1983 has been the war?
The 'other things being equal' is a widely used assumption. What is the
justification for not using it here?
Average age of death should be calculable on the basis of death certificates
for individual cohorts and such calculations can be expected to provide
useful corroborative evidence.
The qualtiy of the death certificate data is another matter. But if it is
procalaimed that statistics from death certificates are useless the Iraqi
government is encouraged in its suppression of such evidence. Estimation of
the scale of the conflict is taken out of the hands of those believe in the
value of systematically produced information (some of whom have the temerity
to call themselves scientists).
The paper published in the Lancet giving an estimate of the number of deaths
among Iraqis based on a household survey has been subjected to withering
criticism on this list without parallell criticisms of earlier estimates.
Alternative ways of making estimates based on death certificates have been
rubbished. Overall the impression given is that statistics do not have
any useful role in throwing some light on the nature of reality in this
conflict.
Do members of this list really believe that statistics have such little
power and relevance?
Ray Thomas
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