If this is how a responsible editor of a scientific journal behaves, I am the Pope.
The self-anointed "elite" has apparently come to the conclusion that all means fair or foul are acceptable to stop Bush from getting a second term in office, and for getting the UNolater running opposite him elected. (I am repeating again and again: if he does get elected against all my hopes, I pray that I am as wrong about him as I was about Bush.)
UPDATE: Medpundit has more on the politicization of The Lancet.
UPDATE 2: The article gets fisked. And fisked.
UPDATE 3: Michael Totten (guestblogging at Instapundit) notes that even several prominent anti-war bloggers see the "paper" is a crock from start to finish. The moneygraf of them all comes from Fred Kaplan at Slate:
[Lancet authors:] "We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period."Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.
And this one can get published in a reputable scientific journal?
I rest my case.
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