Estimating excess deaths in Iraq since the US-British-led invasion

摘要

No-one knows how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion of their country. Surveys published in The Lancet in 2004 and 2006 estimated the number at 10 times figures previously given. Predictably, they raised a storm of protest. Politicians attacked the surveys; public media gave their own spin. Here Scott Zeger and Elizabeth Johnson, statistical analysts of the surveys, discuss these and other attempts to count the dead, and how statistical messages should be best communicated.