(Clearing out some older unfinished posts)
The economist blogs about the Lancet study:
The reaction to the study has been reliably partisan.
So, people who put a little effort into staying somewhat reliably informed about what’s going on fail to let propaganda from a bunch of nutjobs (nutjobs far more partisan than the majority of people they hope to persuade, if a video I saw on YouTube is any indication) turn them into credulous idiots in one fell swoop? Color me unsurprised.
Those who favoured the war have denounced the researchers and their methodology, while those who opposed it have denounced the denouncers with equal fervour. Moderate voices seemed to settle on a consensus that the statistical methodology was all right, but given the chaos of Iraq, the sample might well have been unrepresentative; an article in Science this week advanced that view. But they have largely been drowned out.
The notion that objective reality lies equidistant between two opposing political opinions is an absurd one, and it’s disappointing to see it suggested here.
And the abundant ill will has obscured potentially interesting questions, such as this: suppose Burnham, et al. are correct? What would that mean?
Unless one first determines that the Lancet study has yielded an accurate picture of reality, who cares?