Bloodthirsty Liberal

But the girl’s a bit battered and debased by misuse:

An academic whose estimates of civilian deaths during the Iraq war sparked controversy has been criticised for not fully co-operating with an inquiry.

Gilbert Burnham said in the Lancet medical journal in 2006 that 650,000 civilians had died since 2003 - a figure far higher than other estimates.

…

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)began investigating Dr Burnham’s work in March 2008 after a complaint by one of its members.

His research was based on a survey of Iraqi households and concluded that by July 2006 about 655,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the US-led invasion.

The Iraqi government does not keep precise records of civilians killed and neither do US forces, but in 2006 the Iraqi health ministry estimated that between 100,000 to 150,000 civilians had died.

The AAPOR’s executive council said in a statement carried by the Associated Press news agency: “When asked to provide several basic facts about this research, Burnham refused.”

It said it wanted to know the wording of questions asked and instructions and explanations given to respondents.

“Dr Burnham provided only partial information and explicitly refused to provide complete information about the basic elements of his research,” said Mary Losch, chair of the association’s standards committee.

She added that Dr Burnham’s refusal to co-operate “violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research.”

Let me translate: The Lancet is full of s**t. It has been lying for three years, lending its sullied name to some Dr. Quackenbush for political gain.

How would you feel if you went to your doctor with a bellyache, and he told you that you had late stage liver cancer and two months to live?

When all you had was gas?

I’m used to the New York Times lying. The Boston Globe, the LA Times, Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, even People. But the Lancet? The freakin’ Lancet?

As Jimmy Carter used to say: I will never lie to you. The rest of the media, not so much.

UPDATE
Hot Air has more context:

Last year, the Times of London revealed that George Soros provided almost half of Burnham’s funding for the study. Soros shoved millions of dollars into his highly vocal opposition to the war and George Bush, funding Democrats and the Democratic Party in their efforts to unseat Republicans over the last three election cycles. His contribution of less than $100,000 to Burnham’s efforts were chump change, and bought him the propaganda he needed.

In a word: busted.