29138: Simidor (comment): Some flaws in the Lancet study (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor, <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

By selecting Feb. 29, 2004 as their start up date, the
authors of the Lancet study created a definite bias
that invited every tendency toward exaggeration, plus
a good measure of empathy with their perceived goals
on the part of respondents.  A less suggestive or less
politicized starting point, say Jan. 1, 2000, would
have been more instructive, allowing for comparisons
and contrasts from one period to the next, and for a
broader range of circumstances and interpretations.

It also helps to keep in mind that the majority of
respondents in the study are pre-literate and inclined
therefore to be more creative (less linear) in their
recollection of past events ? a circumstance that
imposed an additional burden of proof on the part of
the researchers. In dealing with murders, political
assassinations and disappearances, every effort should
have been made to further identify the victims through
interviews with associates and neighbors and by
combing available birth and death records.  In the
process it might have become obvious that some of the
victims discussed in the interviews did not exactly
belong to such and such household or did not
conveniently die in the narrow two-year period
ascribed to the study.  But such a sober approach
might have fallen even shorter of the dramatic 10,000
Lavalas victims claimed by Aristide as part of his
?Black Holocaust? propaganda.

Athena Kolbe may cloak herself in her newfound
academic garb to deny any Lavalas affiliation, but
there is no grass tall enough to hide Lyn Duff?s past
and present connivance with such pro-Aristide Bay Area
stalwarts as the Haiti Action Committee and the rabid
Flashpoint Pacifica radio program.  Ms. Duff is an
outstanding personality in her own right.  Still I
wonder who recruited the interviewers for the study,
Ms. Kolbe or Ms. Duff, and whether the latter?s long
term allegiance to Aristide had anything to do with
their selection?

It is also significant that at a time when Haiti was
becoming the kidnapping capital of the world, that the
study did not include kidnapping on its list of human
rights violations.  In addition to being a flagrant
violation of a person?s human rights, Haitian
kidnappings often lead to rape, torture and death.
But kidnapping victims are perceived as more affluent
(though this is not always the case) and less likely
to be Aristide supporters.  Some victims were
apparently less deserving than others in the Lancet
study.

The research team found that more violations occurred
in more densely populated areas where the poor
generally live. This is undeniably true, considering
that half of the population of Cité Soleil had to flee
that area to escape the violence.  But considering
that the capital?s slums were under the control of
self-proclaimed Lavalas ?militants? during the period
of the study, to the extent that the police and
MINUSTAH forces could not safely venture there, just
who were the perpetrators of that violence?  The study
found that more than half of all perpetrators were
either ?criminals? or unknown.  Could it be that
following the Kolbe/Duff metamorphosis model, those
faceless murderers and rapists were ?criminals? by
night and Lavalas by day?  The authors admit that
possibility in passing, but go on blithely to hold
Lavalas virtually blameless.  Given Lavalas? turn
toward fascist violence, this type of political
cover-up is dangerous indeed.


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