29203: De Verteuil (comment) Re: 29202: Durban (comment): On the Lancet Study (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

from:Patrick de Verteuil

The Lancet study has led this list's members to comment in approximately
equal numbers and equal fervor that:
The data is a figment of the writers imagination or:
The data is unassailable gospel truth.
I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between these extremes.
Surveys taken in Haiti, particularly with Haitians of rural extraction, are
inevitably flawed by the rural Haitian tendency to tell the questioner what
they believe he wants to hear; sometimes through wishful thinking (they
agree with what the questioner wants to hear and act to reinforce their
mutual belief); sometimes out of innate kindness and politeness (they really
want to please the questioner).
One year the usually self sufficient Grand'Anse was driven to near famine by
a protracted drought. My wife's cries for help brought a USAID officer here
for a survey. One housewife, greeting the surveyors at the door of her
thatched hut with a tray of glasses of refreshing water, asked what she fed
to her family replied "It depends on what I find. They like chicken and fish
and I also like to serve a nice griot of pork. We of course also enjoy rice
and beans with malenga and plantain on the side."
In addition, the subject of the Lancet survey (do you have relatives to whom
this or that happened?) may not have taken into account the extent of the
Haitian family: we are all related and if you kill or rape one individual it
will appear and be counted in many replies as you will inevitably be
questioning a host of his or her "relatives".