Lancet study now thoroughly discredited

I've posted a couple of times about the questionable Johns Hopkins study published in the Lancet medical journal that figured Iraqi civilian casualties at over 650,000. Well, it's been a bad week for that study.

First came the results of a new study that put the actual toll at around 151,000. Still far too many, but a far cry from the 650,000 hysterically blared in Lancet.

Today, The Times of London reports that the Johns Hopkins study was funded in part by -- wait for it -- George Soros.

A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.

Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

[ ... ]

[Associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University Les] Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”

Of course the damage is already done, with the earlier fictitious number firmly planted within the left-wing anti-war rhetoric. But then again, facts have never been very important to that lot.

Hat tip: Hot Air headlines for the ToL article.