Actually, Diane, the Lancet study excluded their Fallujah data, in part because they were worried it would lend ammunition to critics who would claim that it would throw the entire study out of kilter. If they had used the Fallujah data, the estimated would have been twice as high.

See page 5 of the original article here.
http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf

This American Life had a fantastic episode discussing the methodology of the study.
http://thislife.org/ra/300.ram

My understanding was that it was included and then later taken out, but I may have understood that wrong when I first read about it. Thanks, Clint.

fallujah numbers were always excluded, and this was discussed at the start of the summary. There was so much negative criticism of the study in the US, that propoganda ruled over facts, as usual.

It is a bit, or more than a bit, sad to see that even in a publication like Mother Jones the Lancet study is misquoted or misunderstood. It implicates that very few journalists bother to go to the original sources. The Lancet study was, at the time, the only comprehensive study of Iraqi deaths which concluded that as a conservative estimate there were 98,000 excess deaths due to the invasion, the majority of which were caused by violence, and of those military action by coalition forces was primarily responsible. In the lazy/sleazy/ignorant/careless (take your pick) media, this turned to a bloated maximum. This is not only in the US, the Finnish media does it too.

Though I personally think the Lancet study reflected sound research techniques, the criticisms of the Lancet Study were many and varied, and therefore merit mentioning.

The critcisms of the Lancet study were a campaign similar to the one used in the global warming debate. Scientists evaluating the data come to a consistant and essentially unanimous consensus and then individuals with an agenda raise false criticisms that get equal voice from "balanced" journalists. Lila Guterman at CJR (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/2/voices-guterman.asp) discussed how this important story was ignored by our media and the sloppiness involved in the reporting. The reality is that the Lancet numbers are the only serious attempt to determine casualties. 30,000 is a number that is now floating in the media, but a more correct estimate is probably 50-60,000 civilians (the Lancet study includes police, military, etc.).

>>the criticisms of the Lancet Study were many and varied <<

And, Diane, were any of them valid? Burge has an excellent point, and easily Googleable Deltoid http://timlambert.org/category/lancetiraq/
[HTML in comments would help] found issue with most - if not all - of the criticisms.

But keep up the good work. Not a criticism of the body of your work.

Best,

D

Another point about the Lancet study that hasn't been noted in comments yet: the 100,000 number was their *upper bound*. The lower bound was 8,000. I don't remember what they said was the best estimate of the actual number. I think it was around 30,000 at the time, when Iraq Body Count had tallied some 17,000. Remember that Iraq Body Count uses only actual data from hospital records, eyewitness accounts, media reports, and the like. Lots of people die in wars without calling someone up about it. The Lancet study was trying to estimate the scope of excess deaths post-Saddam. It stands to reason that number would have to be higher than Iraq Body Counts conservative numbers.

I would be interested to know the number of people Saddam Hussein killed every year, vs. how many the U.S. is responsible for killing. Do you think he killed 30,000 people over a 2 or 3 year period? Who knows, but I doubt it. (And I'm using the conservative figure, not the 100,000 number the Lancet suggests.)

Iraq Body Count totals up the number of dead reported in the media -- including Iraqi media, I guess. They themselves take pains to emphasize that this must result in a severe undercount. Doubling their high-end estimate doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

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