Statistics for Dummies

Greg Easterbrook:

I suspect one reason the Iraq death toll elicits so little concern is that exaggerated estimates exist. Americans can say of the exaggerated estimates, "Oh, that's way too high" and skip over thinking about the more probable numbers. The latest silly estimate comes from a new study in the British medical journal Lancet, which absurdly estimates that since March 2003 exactly 654,965 Iraqis have died as a consequence of American action. The study uses extremely loose methods of estimation, including attributing about half its total to "unknown causes." The study also commits the logical offense of multiplying a series of estimates, then treating the result as precise. White House officials have dismissed the Lancet study, and they should. It's gibberish.

Well, no. That is not it at all. The authors used a statistical method that, as they perfectly well knew, doesn't generate especially precise results. That's why when they calculated the confidence interval for their estimate it turned out to be rather wide. The 654,965 number is the middle point of the confidence interval. The true number could very easily be thousands higher or lower than that, but the true number is extremely likely to fall somewhere within the band they laid out. This isn't hard stuff and it certainly isn't gibberish.

Comments

given that the confidence interval is something like 450k-900k, it would probably help if people stopped using the figure 654965. There's obviously not 6 digits of precision when the confidence interval is that big and the apparent precision that comes with quoting the figure actually feeds into the arguments of all the innumerates who trash the study. The number 650000 is much better. As far as Easterbrook goes, his scientific idiocy is well documented, though he did write that great article on the Space Shuttle boondogle many years ago ("Hey Scotty, beam me off this deathtrap"...what a headline).

Posted by: ramster on October 25, 2006 10:07 AM

Easterbrook is an idiot about everything. The post that got his TNR blog axed a few years ago had a line in it that could have been interpreted as describing Jewish Hollywood producers as money-grubbing Jewy Jews, but the brouhaha over that line obscured the stunning hackishness of the rest of the post, which would have been embarrassing even for a sixth-grader to have written.

Posted by: Haggai on October 25, 2006 10:17 AM

I'd have to say this comment from Easterbrook definitely rises beyond stupidity and into willful hackery and dishonesty. I think he's proven himself to be more or less a complete scientific illiterate and his opinions on tehcnical matters are utterly worthless. But even he can't be this stupid, and so he must be intentionally dishonest in his comments here.

Posted by: Doug T on October 25, 2006 10:20 AM

People ignore the Iraqi dead because they aren't American voters, they mostly are very poor, they rarely appear on television, they're not "white", they are mostly not Christian or Jewish, they don't speak English, and Americans have proven themselves very happy to ignore the unpleasant.

Estimates have very little to do with it. Also, the American people have shown themselves to be willfully ignorant of all sorts of numbers - taxes, demographics, population, income - none of which is helped by an elite consensus run by people who were English, Philosophy, and Business majors with very few Science of Math majors in the mix.

Posted by: MDtoMN on October 25, 2006 10:26 AM

Note where Easterbrook actually posted the comment. In the midst of his "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" column up on ESPN's Page 2 which is highly informative and entertaining ABOUT FOOTBALL. This column used to appear on NFL.com and Slate prior to that (if I'm not mistaken). Give him a soapbox and he runs with it. Will the Page 2 Readers respond? Doubtful. Soon, Easterbrook will be writing this column on www.kazakhstan.com.

Posted by: Mark H on October 25, 2006 10:27 AM

This is so typical of Greg "global warming is overrated" Easterbunny. After reading his TMQ column (I'm not entirely sure, but I think I must read it for his cheerleader of the week links), I thought for firing off an email to him, but then I realized it wouldn't do any good. It's a good thing ESPN gave him back his TMQ gig, because he's pretty clueless when it comes to math & science.

Posted by: Bragan on October 25, 2006 10:28 AM

in fact, let's go a step further: i'm betting that easterbrook hasn't read the study. no one who has looked at the study could possibly characterize it as based on "loose" methods of estimation or as "gibberish."

the sad thing about easterbrook is, i do think he's a very good football writer (despite haggai's remark above that he's an idiot abot everything), but i refuse to give him the traffic.

ramster, i think it's actually 385K - 900K or so. i personally don't even think we should talk in terms of 650K; i think we should say that there's a 95% likelihood that there hve been 400K - 900K "excess" deaths....

Posted by: howard on October 25, 2006 10:42 AM

howard, I have to admit that I haven't read his football stuff. He's such an incorrigible hack on everything else that I never thought it worthwhile to seek out anything he had to say on the subject.

Posted by: Haggai on October 25, 2006 10:46 AM

I like his football column -- it's quite funny and entertaining. And it's just about football, so I don't especially care if his various claims are all fully defensible.

Posted by: Matthew Yglesias on October 25, 2006 10:47 AM

haggai, matthew has a stronger stomach than i, so he's still reading easterbrook's football work! however, you should check it out: it will give you a different impression, namely, that when easterbrook knows what he's talking about, he's actually pretty good.

as you note, however, he doesn't know what he's talking about wrt most everything that matters. (and admittedly, since i spend much more time following soccer than football these days, giving easterbrook on football up as punishment for his other egregious sins was relatively easy.)

Posted by: howard on October 25, 2006 11:02 AM

The point is that in addition to the fearful losses of Iraqis, we have had over 90 Americans killed in Iraq this month. We need to get out of Iraq now. Just leave Iraq.

Posted by: Ari on October 25, 2006 11:04 AM

I have no interest in reading war-mongers. Get out of Iraq now.

Posted by: Ari on October 25, 2006 11:06 AM

Blecch. I was reading Easterbrook's column yesterday when I ran into that snippet and had to shut the window out of disgust. The sad thing is that Easterbrook was trying to make a "middle ground" that even if the death count were 30,000, that Americans are remiss to simply ignore that number as if we are not responsible for it at all. But his hackery of a serious statistical argument is appalling. The truly sad thing is that he has a soapbox where he can pontificate with his ill-informed opinions and hackery in front of an audience of millions of people.

Posted by: RickD on October 25, 2006 11:06 AM

The study uses extremely loose methods of estimation, including attributing about half its total to "unknown causes."

This attribution, of course, has nothing to do with the method of estimation.

Posted by: dj moonbat on October 25, 2006 11:10 AM

"I like his football column -- it's quite funny and entertaining."

I would prefer going out for a beer with President Bush....

Maybe you should stop rewarding assholes.

Posted by: jerry on October 25, 2006 11:18 AM

Easterbrook is either a fool or a liar. The 'unknown' category to which he refers is for those respondents unsure of who was responsible for a violent death.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc on October 25, 2006 11:19 AM

"haggai, matthew has a stronger stomach than i, so he's still reading easterbrook's football work! however, you should check it out: it will give you a different impression, namely, that when easterbrook knows what he's talking about, he's actually pretty good."

I disagree. It is not that Easterbrook knows football, it is that he knows football as well as or better than we do. I'd bet that anybody who really knows about football (odds are, if you're reading this, you don't) thinks Easterbrook is an idiot. What he knows best is writing disparagingly of expertise. People who are actually capable of knowing things are disparaged in order to ingratiate himself with "the common man."

Posted by: Njorl on October 25, 2006 11:19 AM

As always, Easterbrook is an idiot. I know little about statistics, but when acknowledged experts in the field support the Johns Hopkins team's methodology, who can argue? Even on the face of it, his argument makes no sense. Where in the Lancet study does it say "exactly 654,965 Iraqi's have died"? That's beyond the realm of stupidity, because anyone with even an iota of sense about stats knows that they rarely deal in absolutes.

Now he's on espn.com talking about how successful the Atlanta Falcons are while running a high school offense. Like he would know. Hard to believe, yes, but he knows less about foootball than he does about stats.

Posted by: MeLoseBrain? on October 25, 2006 11:21 AM

the sad thing about easterbrook is, i do think he's a very good football writer

I don't understand this at all. I don't have a deep love of football, so maybe I just don't understand what's so good about Easterbrook's football columns, but my recollection is that his football analysis (as of a few years ago) sucked.

Posted by: SomeCallMeTim on October 25, 2006 11:22 AM

Shorter Easterbrook:

"I don't know much about statistics, but I do know what I like..."

Posted by: John Moltz on October 25, 2006 11:27 AM

I'd bet that anybody who really knows about football (odds are, if you're reading this, you don't) thinks Easterbrook is an idiot.

I wouldn't make the supposition that those interested in politics are not interested in football. There are similarities, although, when you get decleated in football, at least you know what hit you!

As someone who follows football very closely, and played competitively, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Easterbrook knows as little about football as he does about stats. "Roll-out passes" make Atlanta's offense "more high-school-ish"? That's pure idiocy. The Falcon's offense is far more complex than any high school or Div. 1 college's would be. But Easterbrook bases his theory purely on the fact that the Falcons move the QB out of the pocket more than other NFL teams. Here's a clue, Gregg, they have the most dynamic player in the league playing QB! It makes perfect sense to move him around to put pressure on defensive backfields. In fact, it would be "high-school-ish" not to!

Posted by: MeLoseBrain? on October 25, 2006 11:31 AM

I used to quite enjoy his football column.
and quite despised everything else he produced.

but a couple of points. He ALWAYS tries to slip some ridiculous assertion that has nothing to do with football into his column, because (I figure) he knows he can get away with it there.

and while entertaining at times, he has usually drove me nuts with his football logic and I can't read it anymore.

His infamous - why don't teams ALWAYS run the ball when they need a yard on fourth down because the average gain per running play is 3.something yards demonstrates that he just doesn't get 'numbers.'
He always using statistics that are so generalized that they mean nothing. for instance, he never cites the average gain on a 4 and 1. or the teams in question. or the situation. these all produce radically different averages. he does this all the time with all of his stats. I am sure I could find a specific example in about 2 minutes but i don't feel like going through his column and wasting my time any more.

Njorl is right. When you go into his football logic in detail it parallels his thinking elsewhere. And he is just as stubborn and boneheaded (just a little less annoying because he can be entertaining and he does supply a lot of interesting tidbits)

Posted by: b. on October 25, 2006 11:36 AM

If Easterbrook is so poor at statistics, so confused by statistical methodologies, he sure as hell shouldn't write about sports. Football fans are less stats-happy than baseball fans, but still....


Ed

Posted by: Ed Drone on October 25, 2006 11:41 AM

btw I did a post attacking Kaplan for his claims about the Lancet survey. And Easterbrook makes Kaplan look almost competent.

Posted by: b on October 25, 2006 11:42 AM

Please do not be misunderestimating the irreducible Gregg Easterbrook. He has received many academic awards.

For example:

http://www.re-discovery.org/active_1.html

Show some respect - his name is Gregg, NOT GREG.

Sincerely,
Dr. Azo Mazur
Chemist
Author: The Trouble with Guanine
CEO
reDiscovery Institute

Posted by: Dr. Azo Mazur on October 25, 2006 11:49 AM

As to Easterbrook's statement: "The study uses extremely loose methods of estimation..." I had assumed it meant (as Matthew more precisely said) "the confidence interval ... turned out to be rather wide." Obviously one would not use the term "confidence interval" in a column aimed at football fans. Could be wrong about that, though; as Matthew points out, Easterbrook's "multiplying a series of estimates" sentence is wrong.

In Easterbrook's (partial) defense, many of the news stories DID use the 654,965 number without explaining that it was not a "precide number" but rather simply the midpoint of the confidence interval. Of course one should read the study before commenting on it. However, Easterbrook could have gotten his misimpression if he merely relied on erroneous news stories.

(None of the above to obviate my previously stated objections to the Lancet study, which I won't repeat here.)

Posted by: Al on October 25, 2006 11:49 AM

"Soon, Easterbrook will be writing this column on www.kazakhstan.com."

Not if I be having something saying about it.

Posted by: Borat on October 25, 2006 11:49 AM

Whatever his other sins, he did write a very good article on "WMD".

Posted by: anon on October 25, 2006 11:51 AM

Tell Easterbrook that God intelligently designed the Lancet study, and he'll go along with it.

Posted by: chris on October 25, 2006 11:51 AM

These people don't do actual intellectual heavy lifting. They just provide tag lines and sound bites to make it look to Goober A as if there were a legit controversy so that Goober A can tell himself that it's ok to vote his resentments rather than his conscience.

More specifically, Easterbrook's assertion that the authors claim a "precise" number should merit incarceration were the time ever to come.

He could have noted, being a sport junkie, that our 10000 deaths per year average is greater than the 8500 or so deaths per year that Saddam is accused of. And then speculated who could kill more in an actual no-holds-barred Death Match, Bush or Saddam.

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis on October 25, 2006 11:57 AM

As for Easterbrook's football writing, it is plagued with several fallacies, including but not limited to...

1) He tends to "assume the mean" as in, "Running plays gain on average 3.8 yards per carry, so of course Team X should have run against Team Y on 4th and 3.7 from the 50 yard line". Apparently "variance" is something that doesn't interest him (nor "correlation" for that matter).

2) He seems to be fairly unique in thinking that any kind of blitz used in any kind of situation is invariably a bad idea, since the offense against the blitz gains more yards on average than it gains against a standard defense. Of course, you can take that logic one step further and say "The offense gains on average 3.8 yards per rushing attempt and 4.7 yards per passing attempt. Therefore the offense should pass every down". I guess the virtue of "mixed strategies" eludes him.

Sadly, he's not reliably wrong, which is why I still read him. But he brings far less to the table than, say, Paul Zimmerman. And when he decides to take a foray into science it usually is embarrassing.

Posted by: RickD on October 25, 2006 11:57 AM

I was pretty pissed when I read Easterbrook's nonsensical comments on the Lancet study because his TMQ audience is probably quite large thanks to its ESPN. Lots of sports fans are going to read it and think that, hey, this guy knows LOTS AND LOTS about statisitics.

Don't know what happened to Easterbrook. He's smart enough to read the study and know where the numbers come from, but instead of providing a case as to why they might be flawed, he dismisses them as "gibberish". While making a fool of himself in the process. Another letter to the ESPN Ombudsman is in the offing.

Posted by: Mean Gene on October 25, 2006 12:00 PM

TMQ? Is that still on?

He had some clever stuff in the beginning, like his parka theory (the heavier the coat worn by the visiting head coach, the more likely his team will lose), and he once published my haiku,* but the schtick got old. I bailed when he was talking less and less about football and more and more about cheerleaders. It wasn't offensive as much as boring.

-----
* Come to think of it, he botched even that. He had written something about "one-dimensional celebrity mega-babes." I wrote

Only in Flatland
Does a celebrity mega-babe
Have one dimension.

He published it intact, but then snarked that I was mistaken -- in Flatland (book by Edward(?) Abbott, circa 1890), everyone had two dimensions. Wrong! Female Flatlandians were line segments, sort of like needles, among all the exclusively male polygons.

I'd forgotten how annoying I found his little lecture. Thanks, Matt, for providing me this long-awaited opportunity to vent.

Posted by: Stuart Eugene Thiel on October 25, 2006 12:04 PM

I particularly appreciated the way he pretends to be concerned about Iraqi deaths to dismiss the best estimate thereof there is so far. It is very disingenuous, but very artful. "Using scientific methods to shed light on a tragedy is wrong, it's even irresponsible! It's better to use guesstimate made up in the safety of a home office in the suburbs, rather than collect information on the field! Information from the field (aka. facts) only help American tune out! A made up number on the other hand can be chosen for maximal effectiveness, to draw them in and make them aware of the Iraqi plight! Say: 30,000, for instance. That's a good, pulled-out-of-my-ass, palatable number. If people had pangs of conscience, they would only advocate fake numbers!" Very artful.

I don't know if it would make any difference, but there is a feedback link at the bottom of the espn page.

Posted by: cedichou on October 25, 2006 12:30 PM

MDtoMN: Also, the American people have shown themselves to be willfully ignorant of all sorts of numbers - taxes, demographics, population, income - none of which is helped by an elite consensus run by people who were English, Philosophy, and Business majors with very few Science of Math majors in the mix.

I don't think that the majors of the "elite consensus" here matter. Many of my English and philosophy majors are among the brightest and most inquistive students I teach. I do think that some members of our current "elite consensus" show a wilfull disregard for statitsical information, demographics, etc, and many of them, including Easterbrook, are paid quite a lot of money to ignore these facts.

Easterbrook is a doofus, and in fact, I think he chooses to be a doofus by posing as a "common man" railing against institutionalized knowledge such as global warming and death estimates in Iraq. I read his football column occasionally but only when I'm bored.

Posted by: Chuck on October 25, 2006 12:31 PM

The worst part is that "Slate" has hired Easterbrook as its regular science columnist, this cementing the fall of that once-promising enterprise into utter hackery.

Posted by: Virginia Dutch on October 25, 2006 12:36 PM

I was torn when I read this as to whether he was honestly extremely stupid or deliberately mendacious. Evidence for the latter is his citing Bush's 30,000 death figure -- which HAS to be a serious underestimate, as it is based only on published journalistic accounts -- as the accurate one.

Posted by: MQ on October 25, 2006 12:41 PM

I particularly enjoy people who refer to the "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq" as the "Lancet" study, or the "British" study. Somehow the news that the study was done by a Johns Hopkins-Columbia University-Al-Mustansiriya University team doesn't percolate down the information chain. Could that be because people might take a "Johns-Hopkins" study more seriously? Certainly the researcher leading the team (Roberts) has had a lot of experience in the field, and the 2006 survey benefited from criticisms leveled when the same team released results in 2004. It's notable that his work on casualties in Rwanda and the Congo, using the same techniques, were accepted without question.

Posted by: Wes Parker on October 25, 2006 12:44 PM

Njorl at 11:19 hit the nail on the head. Check out what people at Football Outsiders (serious football statheads) think of Easterbrook's TMQ column...in sum: not much. I'm guessing that the reason people here like his football column is because they don't know as much about football as they do about other topics that Easterbrook is consistently wrong about. RickD had a couple of good examples of this, though there are plenty more.

Posted by: ram3 on October 25, 2006 12:48 PM

Isn't the argument "The number of dead is so high, it must be exaggerated" the exact same argument often used by Holocaust deniers? Interesting, given that he apparently has a history of antisemitism.

Posted by: David in Maine on October 25, 2006 01:19 PM

Another Easterbrook Football Fallacy: if a team scores a lot of points and wins by a huge margin, it always means they ran the score up on their opponent. Actually, if you bother look up the box scores for the small college blowouts he's always bitching about, you'll almost always find that the winning team already built an insurmountable lead by halftime, took their starters out early, and played much more conservatively in the second half. The reason why the final scores end up so huge is that the losing team is usually terrible, and they often just quit trying in the second half. While I'm always glad to see small college football get mentioned in a fairly high profile media outlet, Easterbrook's patronizing attitude towards it ("ooh, those cute little obscure colleges have such funny names and such goofy little bits of trivia about them that I found out by looking at their website for 10 seconds") is downright insulting. And the worst part is that Easterbrook thinks he's giving the little guy a moment in the spotlight.

Posted by: C.L. on October 25, 2006 01:19 PM

i'm not sure why i'm bothering, but yes, easterbrook knows football and writes (or wrote, since i started to boycott him 2 years ago) a good football column.

writing a good football column does not mean "everything that easterbrook says about football is brilliantly insightful and he's never ever been wrong."

someone up above mentioned paul zimmerman, whom i'm an old fan of, and believe me, given a choice between zimmerman and easterbrook, i'll pick zimmerman 11 times out of 10.

but you know what? sometimes zimmerman is wrong, too! amazingly enough, it's possible to know football and write a column and get stuff wrong.

in the terms that matter here, there is a higher confidence in zimmerman's accuracy than easterbrook's, but zimmerman's isn't perfect and easterbrook's isn't zero.

PS. and yes, i know football, as do many posters here.

Posted by: howard on October 25, 2006 01:24 PM

I've worked as an actuary for over 20 years which has given me more than a cursory exposure to applied statistics and survey methodology. Having actually read the Lancet article, not only is what the Hopkins' researchers have done sound, it is SOP for this kind of analysis. As to the precision of the 650K excess deaths estimate -- even at the low end of the confidence interval, the excess deaths estimate is still an order of magnitude higher than that provided by either the US or Iraqi governments. Furthermore, about 90% of the excess deaths are directly attributable to "coalition force activities' i.e. the war.

Posted by: pluky on October 25, 2006 01:32 PM

One day Easterbrook
And the Football Outsiders
Will meet. Popcorn, please!

So he's *still* writing that egregious column? Sometimes I think he realizes that he has no idea what he's talking about, at least when it comes to football. Now, if he'd just think that way about everything else he talks about...he'd be out of a job.

Posted by: NY Expat on October 25, 2006 01:33 PM

There is a pretty interesting comment thread on football outsiders about this TMQ thread.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/2006/10/24/extra-points/4444/

IMHO . . . football outsiders may be the greatest website ever.

Posted by: Finn on October 25, 2006 01:49 PM

We should all send comments to ESPN page 2 about including this political trash in a column. There's a place where you can submit comments on the page.

Posted by: MQ on October 25, 2006 02:12 PM

Vegas sports books love guys who say "I think the line on the Chiefs at Seattle seems way too low" and those who listen to them. They will bend over backwards to get you to come prove your vision of how reality should be.

Posted by: H. Rumbold, Master Barber on October 25, 2006 02:44 PM

Stats isn't my strong suit, but I did manage my way through some classes and when the first lancet study came out I was pretty damn positive that the people trying to poke holes in it were saying they just plain didn't believe in statistics.

The only difference between this one and the last is the use of death certificates as far as I know which means (correct me if I'm wrong), everyone who didn't believe in the accuracy of the first was under the impression that it was an incredible, national conspiracy by the total of the population of Iraq to fool us into thinking they were dying in genocidal numbers. Is this right?

Posted by: Ed Marshall on October 25, 2006 03:04 PM

Stats isn't my strong suit, but I did manage my way through some classes and when the first lancet study came out I was pretty damn positive that the people trying to poke holes in it were saying they just plain didn't believe in statistics.

The only difference between this one and the last is the use of death certificates as far as I know which means (correct me if I'm wrong), everyone who didn't believe in the accuracy of the first was under the impression that it was an incredible, national conspiracy by the total of the population of Iraq to fool us into thinking they were dying in genocidal numbers. Is this right?

Posted by: Ed Marshall on October 25, 2006 03:05 PM

Americans wouldn't care if 600,000 or 600,000,000 Iraqis were killed, even if there was an exact, verifiable body count. So the issue of why Americans don't care about Iraqis being slaughtered has nothing to do with "exaggerated" estimates. It has to do with the narcissistic, arrogant population of this country, that considers these people subhuman and not worthy of any empathy or sympathy. Of course, this is a generalization and there are a few people out there who might care about the people in Iraq being murdered and tortured, but they are not the majority.

Posted by: steve ex-expat on October 25, 2006 03:09 PM

The Good: Easterbrook thinks that the space shuttle is a dangerous boondoggle and that coaches should go for it on 4th down more often, rather than punt.

The Bad: Every other thing he's ever said or written.

Posted by: JB2 on October 25, 2006 03:19 PM

"The worst part is that "Slate" has hired Easterbrook as its regular science columnist, this cementing the fall of that once-promising enterprise into utter hackery. "

Posted by: Virginia Dutch

Slate has been falling into hackery for a number of years. Just as McCain's fall into political prostitution has been visible for years (to anybody who actually looks), so has Kinsley's fall into pressitution. The biggest sign in any magazine is the false cult of 'contrarianism', where being different takes precedence over being correct.

Posted by: Barry on October 25, 2006 03:46 PM

This example highlights everything that is generally horrible about Easterbrook.

He basically wanted to make the (entirely valid) point that it is a war crime if we have killed 30,000 or 650,000 innocent Iraqis and that getting hung up on the number isn't the point. But rather than simply say that he has to get all clever and do the typical TNR bit to show he isn't some icky liberal. So the real point gets overshadowed by all the time he spends dismissing of the 650K figure. And of course consevratives will joyfully excerpt the "liberal" Easterbrook's nonsense debunking the number.

Posted by: Eric K on October 25, 2006 05:54 PM

The use of six significant figures (654,965) is a mistake on the part of the authors. It implies a precision that they do not really have. Since the 1-standard deviation error is about +/- 20%, the precision of the estimate is only good to two significant figures. A more realistic estimate would be 650,000 plus or minus whatever the 2-sigma error is.

This is how it would be presented in most scientific journals. Perhaps they left it at six signficant figures because if they used only two, critics would treat it as more of a guess.

Posted by: anon on October 25, 2006 06:00 PM

Perhaps they left it at six signficant figures because if they used only two, critics would treat it as more of a guess.

The 2004 study was left at two sig. figs., with 98,000 as the point estimate, rounded up to 100k by the headline writers. I'm guessing that they didn't want to run into criticisms that the figure was 'too neat'.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc on October 25, 2006 06:38 PM

Easterbrook's comments on space exploration demonstrate the guy does not have a clue. He has suggested that the USA immediately abandon all its current space exploration efforts and instead begin construction of a "space elevator" to radically reduce the cost of putting things into space. The problem with this plan? Material strong enough to build the space elevator does not exist. We don't know if it's even possible.

Then, he explained that the reason why geosynchronous orbit is at the height it is, by relating it to the Earth's circumference. Anybody that understands Newton's laws knows that this is complete rubbish.

The fact that he's now working for Slate as their science writer is an embarrassment.

Posted by: Robert Merkel on October 25, 2006 08:51 PM

Count me as someone who thinks that Easterbrook's football writing is shot through with the same fallacies as his writing about science and politics (AFAICT), but who enjoys the football writing because it's OK to be unserious about football. IOW, exactly what Ygl said in his first comment.

Posted by: Matt Weiner on October 25, 2006 09:06 PM

Slate has been falling into hackery for a number of years. Just as McCain's fall into political prostitution has been visible for years (to anybody who actually looks), so has Kinsley's fall into pressitution.

Michael Kinsley hasn't been connected with Slate for more than two years, since April 2004.

Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) on October 25, 2006 09:06 PM

One day Easterbrook
And the Football Outsiders
Will meet. Popcorn, please!

Easterbrook wrote for the Outsiders for a short period after he got fired by ESPN.

Posted by: amh on October 26, 2006 03:22 AM

OK, let's say the actual number is way way below that estimate, and is less-than-half---Say, around 300,000 or so.

Well golly-gee oh shucks! ONLY 300K deaths---That's wonderful!!

650K would be bad, but JUST 300K--Beautiful, man!!

650K would be a lot.

But a piddling little 300K is nothing, I tell you.
NOTHING AT ALL!!

Whoop-dee-doo!!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

STAY THE COURSE.

DON'T CUT & RUN.

COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM AT WORK.

etc etc etc etc etc etc

Posted by: nikto on October 26, 2006 11:43 AM

The best way to conclude the results of this study for naysayers is to say that at least 400,000 civilians have died in the post-invasion phase of the war than otherwise would have. Thats as conservative as you can state the results, and its still utterly shocking.

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