George W. Bush dismissed a study released today that finds that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Iraq as a result of the American invasion and occupation there. Bush said, “The methodology is pretty well discredited.”
Oh really. Discredited? By who? By Fox News?
The Lancet has been in publication since 1823, and is one of the most respected medical journals in the world. Its articles, including the one summarizing the new study about deaths in Iraq, are peer reviewed, which means that they are scrutinized to the criticism of experts in relevant fields before they are published. I wish the same was true of the words that came out of George W. Bush’s mouth.
The study that President Bush calls “discredited” was published in the Lancet. Here’s what Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, has to say about the study:
“Given the controversy surrounding the previous Iraq paper that we published, it is worth emphasising the quality of this latest report as judged by four expert peers who provided detailed comments to editors. All reviewers recommended publication with relatively minor revisions. For example, one adviser noted that “this is an important piece of research which should be published because it is possibly the only non-government funded scientific study to provide an estimate of the number of Iraqi deaths since the US invasion.†She underscored the “powerful strength†of the research methods, a view supported by other reviewers. Indeed, this study adds substantially to the new field of conflict epidemiology, which has been evolving rapidly in recent years.”
So what, is George W. Bush saying that he knows more about research methologies than the editor of the Lancet and the team of top research experts employed by the journal?
I think we all know who has been discredited, and it isn’t the Lancet. It isn’t the team that carried out this research.
George W. Bush is the one who has been discredited.
