Bush dismisses Iraq death-toll study
A controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 have died because of the Iraq conflict, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.
US President George Bush says he does not believe it, and experts were divided on whether it is sound.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad derived the estimate from a door-to-door survey, conducted by doctors, of 1,849 households in Iraq.
Taking the number of deaths reported by household residents, they extrapolated to a nationwide figure.
The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95% certain that the real number lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636 deaths.
Even the smaller figure is almost eight times the estimate some others have derived.
The new study, which attributes roughly 600,000 of the deaths directly to violence and 55,000 more to other war-related causes, was released yesterday on the website of The Lancet medical journal.
“I don’t consider it a credible report,” Bush said.
Neither does General George Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq.
“That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen,” Casey said. “I’ve not seen a number higher than 50,000 and so I don’t give it that much credibility at all.”
Neither does Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, which also tracks Iraqi deaths.
“I do not believe the new numbers. I think they’re way off,” he said.
Other research methods on the ground, like body counts, forensic analysis and taking eyewitness reports, have produced numbers only about one tenth as high, he said.
“I have a hard time seeing how all the direct evidence could be that far off…Therefore I think the survey data is probably what’s wrong.”
However, several biostatisticians and survey experts were supportive of the work.
“Given the conditions (in Iraq), it’s actually quite a remarkable effort,” said Steve Heeringa, director of the statistical design group at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
“I can’t imagine them doing much more in a much more rigorous fashion.”
He said the study made “minor departures” from the standards generally used in national surveys for choosing what households to interview.
Whether those departures, brought on by wartime conditions in Iraq, introduced a bias in the results is impossible to measure from the data alone, he said.
Frank Harrell, chair of the biostatistics department at Vanderbilt University, called the study design solid and said it included “rigorous, well-justified analysis of the data”.
Richard Brennan, head of health programmes at the New York-based International Rescue Committee, said the study’s survey approach was typical.
“This is the most practical and appropriate methodology for sampling that we have in humanitarian conflict zones,” said Brennan, whose group has conducted similar projects in Kosovo, Uganda and Congo.
“While the results of this survey may startle people, it’s hard to argue with the methodology at this point.”
