OpenDemocracy: Deaths in Iraq: the numbers game, revisited
http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/35559/print
Michel Thieren
The question of how many Iraqis have died since 2003 has been reopened. In answering it, it is vital to clarify the criteria in making a scientific assessment, says Michel Thieren.
11 - 01 - 2008
The final analysis and computation compensated for a series of possible biases - such as the under-reporting of deaths because people have moved away from households and relocated across them, the impossibility of visiting some households for security reason, and the effects of migration of Iraqis to neighbouring countries. Although adequately controlled, these biases are still present, and this makes the final estimate of "151,000" the one that is, for that survey, the closest to the true toll. The survey released by the New England Journal of Medicine, therefore, concludes that between 104,000 and 220,000 people died in Iraq during the three years after the coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, with the highest probability that the true number is 151,000.