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Everyone Has A Number And No Two Numbers AgreeAPRIL 22, 2004 · 18:17
The number of dead in Iraq has been estimated between roughly 10,000 and 100,000 for eighteen months. Both numbers have been given at press conferences by officials of governments that do not disagree about the war, which means the disagreement is not political, or at least not only political.
A HOSPITAL ENTRANCE. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE GOING IN IS NOT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE COMING OUT.
( FILE PHOTO )
A HOSPITAL ENTRANCE. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE GOING IN IS NOT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE COMING OUT.
LONDON, April 22 -- A coalition spokesman this week used a figure of between 10,000 and 100,000 for deaths among Iraqi civilians since March 2003, a range he described as conservative and which has been quoted since as though it were a single figure.
The methodology behind the low end counts documented hospital admissions. The methodology behind the high end extrapolates from capture rates in comparable conflicts. Both methods are standard in the field and neither is designed to survive being printed next to the other one.
The British Ministry of Defence is understood to hold a mid-range figure which it has not published, on the grounds that the confidence interval is too wide to be useful to the public, a phrase this desk has heard used in three other contexts this year and which in each case preceded a refusal to publish the document.
Corrections: none so far. Published items are never corrected, they are replaced,
and the replacement keeps the original in the archive, where nobody will look for it.
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