Precision Air Strikes

Yesterday I took issue with the opposition of Lord Howe to a proposed requirement for the British military to record civilian casualties caused during their operations.  My post passed over something in his speech that bothered me and which I'll address today. Every care is taken to avoid or minimise civilian casualties and our use …

A Helpful Response from Airwars

Just a few hours ago I commented on yesterday's House of Lords discussion on casualty recording.  I asked for some clarification from Airwars and, lo, Chris Woods has answered.   We maintain two separate datasets for the Coalition - the civcas one here. And the official Coalition/ member nation press releases here. It's the latter which …

Casualty Recording Amendment to the Armed Forces Bill Withdrawn

Hat tip to John Sloboda of Every Casualty for sending me a transcript of the discussion on civilian casualty recording held in the the House of Lords yesterday.  I paste the whole thing to the bottom of this post. My reading is that Earl Howe, whose many titles include Minister of State (Minister of Defence) …

Casualty Recording Debated in the UK Parliament

Keep your eye in the sky fixed on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones.  Every Casualty is now an official Civil Society Partner and the Group is spreading its wings in interesting directions. I was fortunate to participate in an interesting meeting specifically on casualty recording hosted by David Davis  and his staff who …

Survey Chic: Risking Lives, Gathering Garbage

This story has been bothering me for a while: But what is fascinating is that it was possible to conduct this opinion poll at all - especially given the continuing violence in Iraq and the chaos in war-torn Syria. Yes, it's always fascinating to have your workers risk their lives for you.  The Romans were …

Mystics and Statistics Blog

This is a great blog that should definitely interest my readers.  (Full disclosure - I'm hoping to get some funding to work with the people writing the blog.) This is the blog of the Dupuy Institute, founded by the extraordinarily prolific military historian, Trevor N. Dupuy. Dupuy was a pioneer in the quantitative analysis of …

Another Marker for the Chilcot Inquiry

Yesterday I laid down my marker on the Chilcot report which should be released soon. I was quickly reminded that Iraq Body Count put their own marker some months back.  Have a look.

Who Remembers the Chilcot Inquiry?

OK, that was an unfair question. Few readers are old enough to have well-formed memories of the days when disco was King and the Chilcot Inquiry, also known as the Iraq Inquiry, opened its doors. But at long last we are hurtling toward a conclusion to this epic adventure so I'd like to throw down a …

Langer Research Associates Responds: Part IV

This continues the stream of posts beginning here and continuing through here, here, here and here. Today I had wanted to write on duplicates in the D3/KA Iraq surveys but I've hit a little snag in the analysis so I will postpone this subject for the near future. Instead, today I'll cover empty categories, that is, answer choices …

Duplicates and Near Duplicates in Surveys

Suppose you and I take the same public opinion survey.  What are the chances that we give the same answer to a bunch, say, 50 or more questions?  Somewhere between slim and none I'd say unless we belong to the same cult. In fact, if I answered the same survey questions on two successive days …