L'extrême gauche du spectre médiatique

"I understand that you feel that the sample was small: this is most puzzling. 142 post-invasion deaths in 988 households is a lot of deaths, and for the setting, a lot of interviews. There is no statistical doubt mortality is up, no doubt that violence is the main cause, and no doubt that the coalition forces have caused far more of these violent deaths than the insurgents (p<.0000001).

In essence this is an outbreak investigation. If your readers hear about a sample with 10 cases of mad cow disease in 1000 British citizens randomly tested, I am sure they would have no doubt there was an outbreak. In 1993, when the US Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough sample. It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces." (courriel de Les Roberts, auteur principal de l'étude du Lancet, au Independent, 22 août, 2005)

The idea that it is "the small sample and very wide margin of error that makes people nervous about the Lancet figure" is one of the great media falsehoods of recent years - it is simply not true.

Iraq Body Count Refuses to Respond, David Edwards, 14 mars 2006