Blinding us with(out) science

The Times of London (once a highly respected paper of record, but nowadays owned by Rupert Murdoch) discloses that controversial billionaire George Soros, an opponent of the Iraq War, partially funded the 2006 study that estimated the number of deaths attributable to the war as 650,000. The accuracy of this figure was fiercely criticised at the time, and a more recent study puts the number of dead at "only" 151,000 (still 151,000 too many).

The Times article quotes Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, as saying "The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research". This only shows that "many people", including Spagat, are stupid.

The source of funding of a scientific study, though it may warn us to be wary of a possible hidden agenda, says nothing in itself about the validity of the study's results. If the survey is conducted honestly and the methodology used makes sense, why should the fact that person A rather than person B paid for it make any difference? Apart from which, who is going to fund such studies apart from opponents of the war? The war criminals in Washington, London and Canberra who started the war have done their best to avoid and obfuscate the whole issue of the resulting death toll. Soros deserves credit for helping to bring the historical facts into the open.