PJ Media

“Burnham is either being disingenuous in his response to the question about his claimed 5.5/1000 prewar death rate, or he is academically incompetent. An older population does NOT imply a higher death rate: it implies the opposite. The way a country achieves an older population is by its population living longer, which requires a lower death rate. If a country has half the death rate of Sweden, we would expect its average age to be roughly twice as old.”

This is a very good point.

Especially if you assume a death is a death no matter what age it occurred.

Prof. Burnham pushes aside traditional statistical methodologies when he uses clusters instead of random sampling. I would love to see a statistical expert review their data gathering process to see if you can draw any conclusions from the results.

(Prof Burnham)
“The methods we used are standard methods used world wide; the US Government financially cluster sample surveys as a way of providing health and other information in many countries which are assisted by the USA.”

Again the professor makes an assumption that the above events share the same characteristics as deaths from violence in Iraq.

I would have to assume that deaths in Iraq (especially collateral related) are very different events, when compared health and financial data in any given population.

Case in point, if a car bomb goes off at a particular location, the residents of that same neighborhood would poll a death rate much higher than a neighborhood just 5 miles away where no car bombs have gone off.

There is no way to verify the validity of the data if you do not compare the clusters used to the total number of suicide attacks in any geographical area.

Finally, any study that will not or cannot produce the raw data for review has the same value as the junkmail that we receive daily at our homes.