Anti-war Soros funded Iraq study

TimesOnline.UK ^ | 13 Jan 2008 | Brendan Montague

[OCCASparky]

A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.

Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The Lancet study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by Les Roberts, an associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University. He reportedly opposed the war from the outset.

His team surveyed 1,849 homes at 47 sites across Iraq, asking people about births, deaths and migration in their households.

Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”

The Lancet did not break any rules by failing to disclose Soros’s sponsorship.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Wow: How easily, yet it shows how prejudiced they are - that they have never checked this simple math!

[OCCASparky]

Actually, it rather disappoints me. Even when caught in the lie, most people would try to make things right.

The MSM knows they lie, the people know they lie, and yet they've abandoned all pretense of objectivity.

Yet still they wonder why their rating/circulation numbers continue to steadily decline.

THAT, dear boys and girls, is hubris.

[highlander_UW]

THAT, dear boys and girls, is hubris.

Or insanity.

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1320747/posts
George Soros, Media Connections - Bump List

[OCCASparky]

Ah, but not to their minds. See, in their little world, they’re agents of change, and all they have to do is keep repeating their leftist drivel until all of us small-minded sheeple come around to their way of thinking. Because after all, THEY’RE the “enlightened” ones, right? /sarc

[cookcounty]

The Lancet has frequently published bogus stories.

Even 151,000 is high, it works out to 2,500 a month. Bear in mind that the French estimate by Medcines Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) estimated that Saddam caused the deaths of 2 million people in the region: that's OVER 6,000/month for 27 years. Oprah has no tears for THEM. And neither does Obama. Ignorant hypocrites.

[highlander_UW]

Ah, but not to their minds. See, in their little world, they’re agents of change, and all they have to do is keep repeating their leftist drivel until all of us small-minded sheeple come around to their way of thinking. Because after all, THEY’RE the “enlightened” ones, right? /sarc

That does appear to be the mantra they keep reciting. Well, I'm an agent of change to...abortion is murder, we should change the laws and stop the genocide. Of course they fail to grasp that there is more ways to change than their own personal, deluded fantasies.