From the Lancet: The JHU Study on Rencent Changes of Iraq Mortality Rate

It is a politically controversal study. Since I said it is "politically" controversal, anyone comment on this study's validity should at least read the original article can be found here.

Comments to this report ranges from GW Bush's "... the methodology is pretty well discredited..." to "If this is indeed a random sample and truly representative and they did everything they said they did, these numbers are probably in the ballpark ..." by Theodore Holford, head of biostatistics at Yale University's School of Public Health, quoated by the Chicago Tribune. ary on this issue.

A good commentary from Daniel Davies, from the Guardian, can be found here.

One the sample size:
"The results speak for themselves. There was a sample of 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in 47 geographical locations. That is a big sample, not a small one. The opinion polls from Mori and such which measure political support use a sample size of about 2,000 individuals, and they have a margin of error of +/- 3%."

"This is the question to always keep at the front of your mind...
How Would One Get This Sample, If The Facts Were Not This Way? There is really only one answer - that the study was fraudulent. It really could not have happened by chance. If a Mori poll puts the Labour party on 40% support, then we know that there is some inaccuracy in the poll, but we also know that there is basically zero chance that the true level of support is 2% or 96%, and for the Lancet survey to have delivered the results it did if the true body count is 60,000 would be about as improbable as this. Anyone who wants to dispute the important conclusion of the study has to be prepared to accuse the authors of fraud, and presumably to accept the legal consequences of doing so."

"... in the strictest sense, the doubling of the civilian death-rate is usually taken to constitute a humanitarian crisis..."