{"id":754,"date":"2006-10-26T08:12:08","date_gmt":"2006-10-26T08:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/26\/easterbrook-on-the-lancet\/"},"modified":"2006-10-26T08:12:08","modified_gmt":"2006-10-26T08:12:08","slug":"easterbrook-on-the-lancet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/26\/easterbrook-on-the-lancet\/","title":{"rendered":"Easterbrook on the Lancet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of people are jumping on Gregg Easterbrook<\/a> for his remarks on the Lancet<\/cite> study of deaths in Iraq. In particular, fellow ScienceBlogger Tim Lambert blasts him<\/a> for saying:<\/p>\n

\n

The latest silly estimate comes from a new study in the British medical journal Lancet, which absurdly estimates that since March 2003 exactly 654,965 Iraqis have died as a consequence of American action. The study uses extremely loose methods of estimation, including attributing about half its total to “unknown causes.” The study also commits the logical offense of multiplying a series of estimates, then treating the result as precise.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lambert points out that the study actually gives a range: “654,965 (392,979-942,636).”<\/p>\n

In tepid defense of Easterbrook, let me just note that my first impression of that range is also “Oh, that’s stupid.” If I had a student hand in a paper reporting a value as “654,965 +287,671<\/sup>-261,986<\/sub>,” I’d dock them the full “significant figures” points. If your uncertainty is greater than 40%, you have no business reporting your values to six signficant figures.<\/p>\n

I’m willing to accept that this is just different practice in the statistics community, but my first impression is that those numbers look deeply silly to me. They’re claiming way more precision than seems reasonable, at least by the standards used for uncertainty handling in physics.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean that Easterbrook isn’t an idiot, by the way– as a general rule, if the subject is anything other than football, he can safely be assumed to be talking nonsense. He said nice things about Tiki Barber, though, so I’ll defend him just a little bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of people are jumping on Gregg Easterbrook for his remarks on the Lancet study of deaths in Iraq. In particular, fellow ScienceBlogger Tim Lambert blasts him for saying: The latest silly estimate comes from a new study in the British medical journal Lancet, which absurdly estimates that since March 2003 exactly 654,965 Iraqis have… Continue reading Easterbrook on the Lancet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}