Chilcot on Civilian Casualties: Part 4

In October of 2004 The Lancet published a paper by Roberts et al. that estimated the number of excess deaths for the first year and a half of the Iraq war using data from a new survey they had just conducted.  (Readers wanting a refresher course on the concept of excess deaths  can go here.) …

War Death Estimates that are Lighter than Air

I'm in the middle of reexamining the data collected by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study (UCIMS) (This is joint work with my former student Stijn Van Weezel.) The number of excess deaths estimated by the UCIMS is 405,000, 461,000, 500,000, more than 500,000.... well, that's the point....it's not clear exactly what the UCIMS estimate is but it …

World War II Deaths Visualization

Everyone should watch this film by Neil Halloran which manages to convey at least some sense of the scale and proportions of human losses in World War II.  Hopefully, others will follow in the footsteps of this pioneering work. My main nitpick is that many viewers may walk away thinking that the true World War II figures …

Columbia Journalism Review lowers journalistic standards while lecturing on said standards: Part I – Suppressing Uncertainty

Isn't Columbia University supposed to be good at journalism?  And isn't Columbia Journalism Review considered to be a decent publication? It sure doesn't look that way based on this remarkably poor article by Pierre Bienaimé which turns out to be right up my alley. The article is an embarrassment of riches for the blog since it spreads …