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Daniel Davies is excellent on the latest Johns Hopkins research into Iraqi deaths as published in the Lancet.

This is the question to always keep at the front of your mind when arguments are being slung around (and it is the general question one should always be thinking of when people talk statistics). How Would One Get This Sample, If The Facts Were Not This Way? There is really only one answer – that the study was fraudulent. It really could not have happened by chance. If a Mori poll puts the Labour party on 40% support, then we know that there is some inaccuracy in the poll, but we also know that there is basically zero chance that the true level of support is 2% or 96%, and for the Lancet survey to have delivered the results it did if the true body count is 60,000 would be about as improbable as this. Anyone who wants to dispute the important conclusion of the study has to be prepared to accuse the authors of fraud, and presumably to accept the legal consequences of doing so.

Grand old Guardian writer Michael White attempts to monster the findings, unconvincingly:

I am not competent to judge the methodology of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore…

…but does so anyway.

Daniel then steps in and tears White a new one in the comments…