Jousting with the Lancet: Pajamas Media Interviews Professor Gilbert Burnham
His results are absurd. As the people at Iraq Body Count pointed out, there’s no way that anyone ever issued as many death certificates that this study implies. Either the respondents were lying or the survey people were lying when they said they chose a representative sample. Other glaring flaws are that our airstrikes apparently kill men and children but almost no women. How do we get a smart-bomb to avoid women but hit their kids?
His statistical procedures may be completely valid, as mine would be if I surveyed a hundred people in the Bronx for the asking price of the Brooklyn Bridge. I can spend weeks showing all sorts of interesting things about the spread of the prices, but I’d still be buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a smelly homeless person.
