Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.
This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.
2. Certainty and bias
- Certainty is addressed by the IBC requirement that any death in our database be corroborated by at least two independent sources. In 85% of cases this allows identification to the level of day and place. If suitable (and multiply corroborated) evidence is ever supplied that a reported civilian death did not happen, then we would, of course, be ready to remove that death from the database. Such proof has not been offered in any case to date. This, along with other indicators, gives us confidence to assert that every reported death in the IBC data base is a death that actually happened.
- Potential bias may enter the database through such suggested factors as journalists being more likely to report the deaths of women and children than of men, or it being more likely that incidents in Baghdad are reported, compared to other parts of Iraq.