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October 24, 2006

Counting the Dead in Iraq

The media response to the recent Lancet article on ‘excess’ deaths in Iraq is interesting*. After a couple of days, it appears to have largely vanished from the news bulletins (here in the UK, at least). The US and UK government responses to the study's claims have -- in what was either honest perplexity or a brilliant media management strategy -- focused on the issue of whether the methodology used in the Lancet study was appropriate for counting casualties in conflicts such as we are now seeing in Iraq.

By and large, news bulletins just detailed some of the claims made in the Lancet study, and gave government counterclaims: even the more 'intellectual' outlets such as Radio 4 did not generally go into detail as to how the various claims stood up. It appears that, not unreasonably, media organisations do not believe that there is much public appetite for the discussion of statistics and research methods. For example, the large (reported) potential error in the new Lancet study's estimate of excess deaths was barely mentioned. Some blogs have done a much better job of covering such issues.

The problem with this is that it could serve to make ('mainstream') media management much easier. When a study comes out that the government disagrees with, there is reason to think that -- if the government that can erase detailed statistical issues regarding the study -- this will fall from the news bulletins relatively quickly and without detailed discussion.

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Posted by jon_mendel at October 24, 2006 07:31 PM