MaxedOutMama
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Fred Kaplan skewers the Lancet in Slate
If anyone has any doubt that propaganda plays a good part in what the rest of the world is thinking about the US and the Bush administration, you must read the article linked above. The fact is that the Lancet should not have published an a study that could draw so little conclusions, and the media should not have run it with a title discussing 100,000 deaths in Iraq, because that's not what the study concluded. I will quote one paragraph only and then leave you to read an excellent explanation of this travesty of reporting:
"Imagine reading a poll reporting that George W. Bush will win somewhere between 4 percent and 96 percent of the votes in this Tuesday's election. You would say that this is a useless poll and that something must have gone terribly wrong with the sampling. The same is true of the Lancet article: It's a useless study; something went terribly wrong with the sampling."
