Deltoid

The Lancet has published two letters on the Iraqi Mortality Study. In the first letter, Stephen Apfelroth claims that cluster sampling is an invalid methodology. This criticism was dealt with way back in November. Apfelroth is wrong. Cluster sampling is a widely used methodology and all the experts in the area consulted agreed that Lancet study used it appropriately. Apfelroth also raises some other objections that are mostly just speculations that the sampling was not done correctly. Roberts et al sort him out in their reply. One thing in their reply that is worth noting is that they remind the readers that they are not new to estimating war-related mortality, citing their previous work in Kosovo and the Congo.

Shannon Love is pleased that someone is on his side against cluster sampling and all the statisitical experts, and finishes with:

I am more convinced than ever that Roberts is not being honest.

At least Love didn’t accuse Roberts of treason this time.

The Fifth Skeptics Circle is here. The link to Mike Huben’s pre-blogging blog brought back memories with this eulogy for Steve Kangas. Before there was the Lancet study there was Kellermann et al’s NEJM study that found that owning a gun was associated with a three-fold increase in the risk of being murdered. This prompted many furious and ill-informed “debunkings” on Usenet. Kangas put together a nice document rebutting all of them.

Via commenter JoT we have an interview with Les Roberts about his study. Roberts mentions how surprised he was that was a such a large increase in violent deaths. From his previous studies in other war situations he expected that there would be an increase in deaths, but mainly from indirect causes like disease.

The interview was prompted by a report to the UN Human Rights Commission by Jean Ziegler about the increase in malnutrition in Iraq after the invasion. (It seems to based on last year’s UNDP study discussed here.) Needless to say, any report that the invasion might have made things worse is immediately attacked by warbloggers. John B slices and dices them over at Shot by both sides. Kevin E Moley offers this response to Ziegler’s report:

“First, he has not been to Iraq, and second, he is wrong,”

First, irrelevant, and second, why? Moley continued with his ad hominem theme:

“He’s taking some information that is in itself difficult to validate and juxtaposing his own views - which are widely known,” Moley said, referring to Jean Ziegler’s opposition of the US military intervention in the country.

Let’s see, the 2002 survey found that acute malnutrition in Iraqi under 5s was 4% and the 2004 survey found that it was 7.7%. Apparently, it was only by juxtaposing his anti-war views that Ziegler was able to wrongly attribute the increase to the war. Otherwise people would have instantly spotted that the real reason was something else. Like, ummm, what?

Moley rejected the rate “purported to be accurate by Jean Ziegler” and said malnutrition in Iraq was notoriously difficult to gauge. He noted that some estimates had put it at 11 per cent in 1996 and 7.8 per cent in 2000, while Saddam was still in power.

Moley doesn’t seem to have actually gotten around to giving a reason why the findings of the 2004 survey were wrong. The reduction in malnutrition from 1996 to 2002 is generally accepted to be the result of the oil-for-food program.

“The surveys that have been taken … have indicated that the recent rise in malnutrition rates began between 2002 and 2003 under the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Moley noted.

No, the surveys do not indicate that at all. They show that there was a significant increase between 2002 and 2004. They don’t tell us when that increase occurred. I don’t think you can plausibly claim that the increase (which reversed the decreasing trend up to 2002) started before the war unless you can offer some possible cause. Which Moley doesn’t.

Did I mention that Moley is US ambassador to the UN organizations in Geneva? The nonsense above is the US government’s response to the increase in malnutrition in Iraq. Denial.

Via William Sjostrom I find that Mike Adams has distilled Lancet denialism down to its essence. He quotes from the New Scientist’s description of the Lancet study:

“The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by coalition forces has lead to the death of at least 100,000 civilians, reveals the first scientific study…of almost 1000 households scattered across Iraq.”

You read that correctly. A scientific study “of almost 1000 households” determined that we killed 100,000 civilians in Iraq before the November election.

Believe it or not, Adams is criminology professor and he can’t conceive how a survey could estimate the number of excess deaths.

I’ve added gravatars to the comments. You can have a little icon (your gravatar) that represents you next to each comment you post. All you have to do is upload your icon at the Gravatar site and enter your email when you leave your comment. I don’t display your email—it is just used to look up which gravatar to use. There is now a separate entry for email and url when you leave a comment so that you can have a gravatar as well as a link to your web page when you leave a comment.

Look at the comments to this post for an example of what it looks like.

Chris Mooney has posted a transcript of a talk he gave at Rutgers on way that a misguided balance in science reporting between mainstream science and fringe beliefs misleads people.

Michael Duffy has presented a radio program on climate change that doesn’t have that problem. He has a range of panellists whose opinions on anthropogenic global warming range all the way from “it isn’t happening” to “it doesn’t matter”. Where can you get panellists like that? The Lavoisier group, of course.

Duffy opened the program with this howler:

“Few people, for instance, are aware that 99% of greenhouse gases comprise water vapour. In other words, even if humans increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 10 or even 50 or more percent, in the context of all greenhouse its actually pretty small.”

Not only does he greatly overstate the fraction of the greenhouse effect attributable to water vapour, he misunderstands what this means. Gavin Schmidt explains. Duffy’s 99% figure has no scientific support. More importantly, Duffy makes the mistake of assuming that the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere is fixed. But warming the earth by increasing carbon dioxide will result in more water vapour in the atmosphere. So, even if water vapour was 99% of the greenhouse effect, it would not follow that increasing carbon dioxide would necessarily have a small effect. Duffy also seems unaware that the natural greenhouse effect is very large, keeping the earth 33°ree;C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. Even a 10% increase in the greenhouse effect would result in substantial warming.

Tellingly, none of Duffy’s expert guests corrected his gross error about water vapour. First, William Kininmonth claimed that the climate models were no good. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the models. Next, Garth Paltridge argued that we can’t trust the models because only the experts in modeling really understand them. (No, really—that was his argument.) Then, Aynsley Kellow claimed that it was all politics and that Helmut Kohl had dreamed up the whole issue to undercut Green opposition to nuclear power back in the 80s. Finally, Harlan Watson gave the official Bush administration spin on why the US didn’t ratify Kyoto. (Apparently it would have totally ruined the US economy.)

Radio National invites comments on Duffy’s show here.

Duffy also has a column in the Sydney Morning Herald saying basically the same thing, with an added dose of Ross McKitrick attacking the hockey stick. He gets taken apart by John Quiggin and Immanuel Rant.

Australia’s own version of Baghdad Bob offers the following comments on the Lancet study (slightly paraphrased):

“The Lancet, they always depend on a method what I call … stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies.”

The Lancet is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!”

Update: After dismissing the Lancet study because it was based on a “Survey of a Thousand Households”, Blair declares a Conservative victory in Canada based on a survey of 1,125 Canadians. Odd.

We bought a house a few years ago. It was our first entry into the real estate market and it was quite scary. Most houses in Sydney are sold by auction, and this seemed to be a way to coax buyers into paying more than they could afford. We saw a house that my wife really wanted, and while talking to the sellers’ agent she blurted out the maximum price we would be willing to pay for it. We had sort of resigned ourselves to paying that much, but when the auction came around, we got the house for $10,000 less than that. That was my bid in the auction, and nobody was willing to bid more, so the auction price was less than the highest price we were willing to pay.

There is an explanation for what happened—while $10,000 is a lot of money for the seller, the real estate agent’s cut of this is quite small, so it is in his interest to work towards a quick sale, rather than getting the best price for the seller. Well, that is an explanation, but is it true? Steven Levitt came up with a clever way to test the explanation. He analyzed what happened when real estate agents sold their own homes as compared with regular folks and found that real estate agents took ten extra days to sell their own homes and got 3% more for them. His research is full of clever insights like this and now he has teamed up with Stephen Dubner to write Freakonomics a book giving a popular account of some of the things he has found out in his work. It was a very interesting and easy read. As I was reading it I left it in the living room while I did a few things and when I got back it had vanished because my 16-year-old had grabbed it and started reading it. He read the whole book after I had finished. His comment: “Very fascinating book”, and he passed it on to the 12-year-old, who said it was an “Amazing genius book”. Both boys told Mrs Lambert that she had to read it. She also enjoyed it, telling me “Almost makes me believe in statistics again”. So the unanimous opinion of my family is that it is a great book full of ideas that spark your interest.

The marketing campaign for Freakonomics uses blogs, with review copies sent out to several economist bloggers and, um, me. Levitt and Dubner have also started a blog about the book.

Of particular interest to this blog is the discussion on John Lott in the chapter examining the reasons for the crime drop in America in the 90s. Levitt describes Lott’s dishonest use of his Mary Rosh sock puppet and the question as to whether Lott fabricated research before dismissing Lott’s argument that carry laws caused crime to fall, citing Ayres and Donohue’s refutation of Lott’s studies.

So I have a question. Why do sellers agree to use auctions to sell their houses? Auctions are good deal for the agents, because they sell the house quickly, but they won’t give the sellers the best price. While most houses in this part of Sydney are sold by auction, it’s easy to find an agent who will sell it the other way. So why use a method that won’t give you the best price? Give me your answers in comments.

Michael Duffy has followed up his radio show that misrepresented the science of global warming with more of the same. He had Bob Carter on this time and Carter trotted out all the favourite falsehoods of the global warming sceptics. Actually, Carter complains about being called a sceptic:

Such persons, and myself as you introduced me, are often termed ’sceptics’ and that’s meant to be a term of denigration, but I’m a scientist…it’s my job to be a sceptic, Michael, and those who are not sceptical towards human-caused global warming or, indeed, towards any other fashionable environmental concern, are acting in unscientific manner…religious, even.

If “global warming sceptic” has become a term of denigration, it’s because of the way they have conducted themselves, dismissing real science on the flimsiest of grounds. I guess I’ll use the more accurate “global warming denialist” to describe Carter.

Carter offers up the usual misrepresentations of the science: urban heat islands contaminate the surface record (no they don’t), equivocation about the word “consensus”, the “hockey stick” is broken (no), ice cores show that warming precedes increases in C02 (only partly), the IPCC summary does not reflect the body of the report (yes it does).

One particular misrepresentation is particularly troubling. Carter claims:

[the surface record] conflicts with independent estimates or measurements that we have of changing temperature made in the atmosphere by satellites and weather balloons. They show very little net change over the last 30 or 40 years.

But the satellite data shows significant warming over the past 30 years. The only discrepancy is that some analyses find only half as much warming as the surface record, while others show a similar amount of warming. It is wrong to pretend that disagreement somehow proves that there hasn’t been any warming.

I remonstrated with Carter when he made similar claims in a Tech Central Station article last year. Here is what he wrote in reply:

There is no conflict between the two following statements, and I stand by both of them.

“There is indeed a small, statistically significant trend.(in the MSU data as analyzed by e.g. Christy et al., 2003)”

and

“The (MSU data) show virtually no long-term trend of temperature increase despite the increased carbon dioxide levels over the last 25 years”

The first is a statistical statement. The second is a statement of scientific judgement which takes into account, amongst other factors, the statistical result.

The sort of technical detail in which you are seeking to discuss the MSU data is most usefully conducted in the relevant professional journals. For reasons of length as much as any other, it is in general not possible to go into such details in an editorial piece written for the general public. That accepted, of course it becomes even more important that the writers of such pieces take particular care with their words. That I have tried to do, and I am sorry if it has not been to your satisfaction.

By coincidence, an interesting new article on MSU results has just come out in Nature (attached). It adds some weight to your evident belief that atmospheric temperatures are rising. On the other hand, many will be concerned that it has proved necessary to selectively manipulate the data to achieve the result. Earlier attempts to make such corrections are acknowledged to have failed.

I shall be interested to see what the expert atmospheric scientists make of Qiang’s study, whilst rather doubting that it will prove to be the last word on the subject.

As I said last time, what one makes of the MSU results (i) depends upon the date and authorship of the paper one chooses to trust; (ii) requires that allowance be made for exceptional events such as the 1998 El Nino; and (ii) will be much clearer when we have another 20 years of data.

So Carter is well aware that the satellite data shows warming but did not mention this on the radio show.

John Quiggin has more on the Duffy and Carter show.

Reading and listening to global warming sceptics can get a little tedious because they keep trotting out the same discredited arguments. So I’ve come up with a little game you can play to make it more interesting. I call it Global Warming Sceptic Bingo! Just tick the box when they use the argument next to it. Get four in a row and you win! A good talk to try it on is Bob Carter’s (At 37:00 on the 11 April 2005 Counterpoint here.)

In the 70s scientists were predicting an ice age #	There is no such thing as global average temperature. #	Scientists only say that global warming exists so they can get grants #	The IPCC summary for policy makers does not reflect the body of the report #
Belief in global warming is a religion	Fred Singer cited #	Ice cores show that warming precedes increases in C02 #	Science doesn’t work by consensus #
17,000 scientists signed a petition saying global warming isn’t happening #	Satellites show no warming #	Michael Crichton cited #	Climate modeling isn’t scientific #
Urban Heat Islands contaminate the surface record #	We can’t predict the weather a week in advance. How can we do it 100 years in advance? #	Water vapour is 98% of the greenhouse effect. #	The “Hockey Stick” is broken. #

Oh yeah, I included links to refutations of the arguments (except for the really stupid ones).

Update: William Connolley decides to refute the “can’t predict the weather” argument..

The Sixth Skeptics Circle is here. Check it out.

I got some spam from David Horowitz asking for donations to fund his lifestyle or something. Brad R. at Sadly, No, got the same spam. (Except that where his had “Brad” mine had “Tim”.)

So who is this Horowitz fellow? Via Ralph Luker I found a discussion he had with Tim Burke. Burke began with:

On DiscoverTheNetwork, some of my objections have already been ably described by my colleagues. Let me mention a few of my greatest concerns.

First, I think the entire project has an almost non-existent sense of what represents a “linkage” between two separate individuals. This is the bread and butter art of intellectual or political history, the major question in the study of social networks. What is minimally needed to claim a serious or substantial connection between two people in terms of ideas they share, institutional projects they are both contributing to, influences they exert on one another? Whether you’re talking about a connection across time (some individual in the past influencing some individual at a later time) or space (some individual in one society or community influencing another), you have to define what you regard as a meaningful connection, stick to that definition, and provide evidence of it.

DiscoverTheNetwork is justifiably made fun of not for ideological reasons but because it so miserably fails to make it out of the starting gate in this regard. DiscoverTheNetwork operates with an implicit definition of “linkage” that makes allows arbitrary assertions of connections between anyone who annoys its creators. If taken seriously, it would be hard to disallow any connection proposed: you could connect Lynne Stewart to Mayor Bloomberg or Noam Chomsky to Milton Friedman using the idea of linkage operating within the project. It’s rather like the “Kevin Bacon game,” only elevated to a high level of seriousness and polemical aggression.

Horowitz began his reply with:

Professor Burke begins with a series of insults—as seems to be the norm for leftists, particularly when discussing issues with conservatives whose work they have not read. But underneath the unearned scorn poured forth in Professor Burke’s first two paragraphs…

No need to read any further. Burke did not begin with a series of insults. I don’t know whether Horowitz is lying or crazy or what, but in any case he is clearly not worth spending any more time on.

Via Chris Mooney I find this comprehensive Mother Jones feature on the science and politics of global warming. I found it interesting to compare this handy chart of forty think tanks that have received scads of money from ExxonMobil and have denied the existence of global warming with my own table of think tanks that have received money from Microsoft and have attacked Open Source Software.

A new organization Climatchangeissues.com has sprung into existence in Australia to

support solutions to the unresolved issues of climate change which are based on sound science, use market mechanisms and trade liberalisation as a key driver of economic growth and poverty reduction.

They are funded by

organizations, individuals, companies and foundations who support a balanced approach to public policy debate and who encourage reliance on markets to improve public welfare, raise standards of living and achieve sustainable development.

Their website contains the usual collection of articles saying that global warming isn’t happening and it will be a good thing and it’s not worth doing anything about. Pretty much the same stuff that you get from these other, totally unconnected, groups. Hey, do you think that maybe, just maybe, they are funded by ExxonMobil as well?

And in one of those weird coincidences that you would never have expected, Climatechangeissues.com has exactly the same IP address as the Lavoisier Group’s website. What are the odds?

Ken Parish, bored, is asking bloggers to post their scores on the political compass survey. I already have a page where bloggers can do this, but it is a bit unwieldy with 500+ entries. So I thought it would be interesting to do one just for Australian bloggers.

(more…)

Socialist Worker has an interview with Les Roberts about his Lancet survey. There are comments on the interview on Crooked Timber and Shot by Both Sides. Roberts makes the point that a NEJM study that surveyed US soldiers on whether they had killed a non-combatant in Iraq tends to support the findings of his study.

This story also seems to support the Lancet study:

A week before she was killed by a suicide bomber, humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military commanders to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by US forces.

Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command, famously said the US army “don’t do body counts”, despite a requirement to do so by the Geneva Conventions.

But in an essay Ms Ruzicka wrote a week before her death on Saturday and published yesterday, the 28-year-old revealed that a Brigadier General told her it was “standard operating procedure” for US troops to file a report when they shoot a non-combatant.

She obtained figures for the number of civilians killed in Baghdad between 28 February and 5 April, and discovered that 29 had been killed in firefights involving US forces and insurgents. This was four times the number of Iraqi police killed.

That death rate corresponds to about 3,000 such deaths over the time period of the Lancet study. Since March was relatively quiet, the true number may well be higher. This is in rough agreement with the Lancet number of very roughly 6,000 civilians accidently shot dead by the coalition.

Lott’s responses to Michelle Malkin’s op-ed are in a fixed-width font, while my comments on his response are in italics like this. Lott’s responses were downloaded on 25 April 2005. (more…)

This book review by Matt Taibi of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat is brilliantly funny. Go read it.

Taibi’s review has been widely linked and praised by bloggers but I have found a blogger who didn’t like it—John Ray, who wrote about it:

But reading these diatribes of rage and hate does certainly explain the horrors that happen when Leftists gain unrestricted power (i.e. in Communist regimes).

My guess as to why Ray didn’t like it goes like this: Before Ray can fit a piece of writing into his worldview, he needs to decide whether it was written by a Leftist or not. In this case, Friedman’s book is a rave about the wonders of globalization, so Ray decided that he must be “conservative-leaning”, and that someone who criticises Friedman must therefore be an evil Leftist full of rage and hate. Ray isn’t bothered at all by the fact that everyone else thinks it’s a great review. In fact, after he reads posts from consrvative bloggers praising Taibi’s review, Ray concludes that his

point about the article by Taibbi being just a rage outburst with only marginal information content stands well confirmed.

I guess that the more people disagree with you, the better confirmed your theories are….

Check out the Seventh Skeptics Circle here.