The MIchael Fumento/Bowie Poag analogy that David noted seems so apt. You just can’t make up stuff this good.

Fumento has had a change of heart. After piling onto the Lancet researchers for pumping up the Iraqi death toll by using data from deadly Falluja, now he’s accusing those pro-terrorist medical researchers of not including the Falluja data.

If you’ll recall when last we met, our hero was taking down those evil bounders from the British medical journal Lancet (“Al-Jazeera on the Thames,” as he so daringly put it) for their study on deaths in Iraq. It seems that, by including data gathered in Falluja, the evil Lancetteers had biased their study, like “determining how much of a nation’s population wears dentures by surveying only nursing homes.”

When any number of people helpfully pointed out to Lambert that he was wrong, and that the Lancetteers had excluded the Falluja data as an outlier – they apparently didn’t want the equivalent of a nursing home full of denture wearers throwing off their data – Fumento dug in his heels. “Find in the paper where they provide an equivalent to the 100,000 figure but exclude Falluja deaths,” (emphasis added) our Superhero of the New Science-Based Right thundered.

Several people showed him. Again. So Fumento changed tack, now accusing the Lancetthajadeen of not including numbers based on the Falluja data.

As Lambert points out, we now have this nicely summed up in a single comment thread over on Eye Doc’s blog.

Fumento I: “The authors claimed to have come up with one set of numbers including Falluja, another without. But strangely, they never present the ‘without numbers.'”

Fumento II: “The study did not present numbers that included Falluja, either in the abstract or text. Yet they accuse ME of not reading it.”

Here’s the full pertinent paragraph from the Lancet study (emphasis added):

Evidence suggests that the mortality rate was higher across Iraq after the war than before, even excluding Falluja. We estimate that there were 98 000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000 194 000) during the post-war period in the 97% of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Falluja. In our Falluja sample, we recorded 53 deaths when only 1?4 were expected under the national pre-war rate. This indicates a point estimate of about 200 000 excess deaths in the 3% of Iraq represented by this cluster. However, the uncertainty in this value is substantial and implies additional deaths above those measured in the rest of the country.

In other words, they did the with-Falluja calculation – “200,000 excess deaths” – but responsibly threw it out as an outlier, because they didn’t want the equivalent of a nursing home biasing their data on how many people wear dentures.

Chris Mooney, in his excellent CJR piece on media coverage of political/science controversies, quotes from a study by Maxwell T. Boykoff and Jules M. Boykoff of the coverage of climate controversies in major newspapers:

The Boykoffs analyzed a random sample of 636 articles. They found that a majority ? 52.7 percent ? gave ?roughly equal attention? to the scientific consensus view that humans contribute to climate change and to the energy-industry-supported view that natural fluctuations suffice to explain the observed warming. By comparison, just 35.3 percent of articles emphasized the scientific consensus view while still presenting the other side in a subordinate fashion. Finally, 6.2 percent emphasized the industry-supported view, and a mere 5.9 percent focused on the consensus view without bothering to provide the industry/skeptic counterpoint.

Not to be outdone, the Media Research Center?s Free Market Project has done a study of its own:

No Science Debate Allowed: Broadcast news programs presented the claims of liberal environmentalists that global warming is a given, that mankind is to blame for it, or both, 55 percent of the time (77 stories). That?s six times more often than they showed valid scientific objection to global warming theories.

“Claims of liberal environmentalists?” That’s a bit of a giveway.

The back story: On my other blog, I also discussed the whole Fumento/Lambert/Lancet thing, observing that “We’re left with two possibilities here, neither of them pleasant. Fumento, who styles himself a journalist, either misrepresented the study’s conclusions, or he hadn’t read it.”

The thoughtful Mr. Fumento responds, via email:

First, it seems to me that any nationally syndicated columnist, including those I can’t stand, is a journalist — whether John Fleck acknowledges it or not. Second, I dropped one of my arguments from the TCS piece only because it confused people with simple minds. Like you. As it happens, I also had to cut 200 words even as I added in new information. So we are faced with two possibilities here, neither pleasant. A) You’re not particularly bright; B) You’re not particularly bright.

This guy’s great! He should get a blog!

I got an email today from the ever-thoughtful Michael Fumento:

Earth to Inkstain and Lambert: Other than Inkstain caring what Lambert says and Lambert caring about what Inkstain says (perhaps), nobody cares what either of you says. Not only are you fully contained in the blogosphere, you’re actually in a much tinier realm than that. Meanwhile of the many places my piece on the Lancet trash appeared is today’s Daily News, weekend population above 500,000. You attack not out of a sense that injustice has been done regarding the Lancet report, but out of jealousy. But if you cleaned up your act, you might just find that somebody somewhere, even with a circulation of ten, would occassionally print you. Alas, you will not. You are a lost cause.

I am of course chastened and humbled by Mr. Fumento’s obviously superior intellect and publishing prowess. Maybe, if I clean up my act, I might just find that somebody, somewhere, even with a circulation of 110,000, might regularly publish my work. Wouldn’t that be cool!