30030: Dailey re: 30025n(Haiti4Peace and The Lancet) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Peter Dailey <phdailey@msn.com>


I have not seen the presentation by Dr. Hutson that Haiti4Peace refers to, or 
anything else purporting to analyze the raw data that the Wayne State 
Researchers collected, so I am unable to comment on Haiti4Peace's summary of 
it. However, given the casual contempt for the truth so evident in the rest of 
the letter, I am unwilling to take Haiti4Peace's word for it or for very much 
else.

H4P asserts that the Lancet article "focused on answering the question: who 
were the human rights violators?" Really? I didn't bother to save a copy, but 
my recollection is that the Lanctet article attempted to estimate the incidence 
of crime over a two year period throughout Port-au-Prince, based on a 
geographic survey that gave bourgeois neighborhoods equal weight with popular 
ones, and that it included estimates of crimes against property and sexual 
assaults against restaveks that one could not automatically assume were 
politically motivated.

H4P notes that Wayne State and The Lancet found that not only had the raw data 
not been manipulated "but there was no evidence of bias or false reports in the 
data analysis or findings" by which I think she means that there was no 
evidence that the raw data was manipulated. "This means  that, despite 
accusations to the contrary, the findings of the Kolbe-Hutson Lancet Study are 
now and always have been accurate." Of course it means no such thing. It makes 
no representation as to the accuracy of the conclusions, nor could it, only 
that the data was not "cooked."

My skepticism regarding the Survey's reliability, as I noted before, was that 
it reported that during the two year period in question, MINUSTAH had not 
caused a single death or assault. Ms. Kolbe stated that what deaths or assaults 
did take place were not "statistically significant." H4P throws up her hands 
asserting  that she can "only recommend that Peter Dailey take a basic survey 
methodology or statistics course...If Peter Daily (sic) cannot comprehend why a 
statistically representative random sample of households would not detect every 
case of murder, well then perhaps he is not intelligent enough  to engage in a 
debate on this issue." As far as the last part goes she may be on to something. 
I would only note that unlike H4P I am not carrying water for a particular 
politician, and when intellectual dishonesty is blatant enough I recognize it.

I would refer readers to her last paragraph.  My objection to the survey was 
not that it failed to "detect every case of murder" by MINUSTAH, as H4P would 
like list members to think, but that it failed to detect ANY deaths or assaults 
over a two year period for which MINUSTAH was responsible.  How much reliance 
can one place on a survey like that?

Haiti4Peace. Of course the author is not Haitian but an American 
presumptiousness enough to think she is entitled to speak for Haiti. Nor is 
there much evidence that she is for peace.

What arrogant nonsense!

Peter Dailey